That Which Tears Us Apart, Ties Us Together
by Swallow and Amazon
Summary: Boys become Thunderbirds
1. Scott - Spring Break

Seems as good a day as any and a better day than most to post this, though Pacific Time is going to cock it up. Sigh.

 ** _Summary: Boys become Thunderbirds_**

 **Chapter 1**

 **Scott _-_ Spring Break**

 ** _In which there is a family barbecue - Gordon Tracy prepares a welcome for his brother – John Tracy feels angry and guilty simultaneously - Virgil Tracy learns that sometimes it is easier to keep a secret than to share it – Alan Tracy is allowed to fly transoceanic for the first time and Professor Hiram K. Hackenbacker compares his life to that of J. Robert Oppenheimer._**

He's more than two hours late.

He flies commercial into Honolulu the night before, on the jump seat of a Tracy Industries affiliate, and meets up with some buddies from basic training. For old time's sake they hit the tourist hotspots, cruising around and hopping bars in Waikiki.

In the morning, he slides out of bed, grabs his trousers and dresses in the hall. By way of apology to his bed mate he leaves a paper bag containing a store bought coffee, a Danish and his number - should she ever be in New Mexico - on the table in the kitchenette. He strolls the prom for an hour or so until he's sure that his head is clear before he heads to the dock.

The little seaplane is Gunderson's pride and joy. The chassis is essentially a 1990 De Havilland Beaver, but it has been retrofitted for range and speed. Most of the guts of her are now Boeing, but she's got an Airbus nav system and Endymion Inc. retros. There are even a few TI components in there. The wingspan has been altered to improve her velocity capabilities, meaning her silhouette now resembles a 2022 Hornet more than anything. Gunderson once told him he 'might do' as a pilot. That he is not only allowing him to fly his baby, but to fly it solo for a couple of days, is an honour without compare. He makes sure he's good and sober before bringing her up.

He's soon cruising at 20,000 feet.

Under pain of death he wouldn't admit it to Gunderson, but actually, he doesn't like the baby much. He learned to fly these skies in a Beaver when he was twelve years old and flying with her brassy younger sister feels a bit like cheating, even if she does show a bit more leg. But the freedom of having her, of not having to rely on pick ups, of being able to come and go as he pleases, is worth so much that he'll even put up with a lousy date.

It's a clear day over the Pacific. On days like this you wish you could keep flying forever.

As if on cue, he gets the first glimpse of his destination, no more than a bruise-coloured smudge on the horizon. A lead weight settles in his stomach.

The islanders call it Kanavatu's Nest, Vanity Fair had called it "an eccentric's paradise", his kid brother has taken to calling it Supervillian Island.

When he's in the mood, Scott calls it home.

Right now he doesn't think he's in the mood.

* * *

The baby buzzes as he eases off on the yoke and takes her down.

"Tracy Island, this is Alpha Echo Hotel Three Four Two, on final approach. ETA seven minutes." He could still turn her around. The idea strikes him even as he signals the island. Meet up with Skip and Teo in Barbados. Or keep flying, spend a couple of days surfing on the Barrier Reef.

But now the radio is crackling to life. "Holy unethical aeronautics, Three Four Two, what is that monstrosity? Is that supposed to be a beaver? You can't land that thing here. Are you trying to kill our poor father before he's even cooked our dinner? John, arm the laser canons. Release the supersharks. Let's put that poor creature out of its misery."

If it sounds like a duck, and quacks like a duck and provides stupid running commentary like a duck then it's probably a duck. But Gordon is supposed to be halfway around the globe, at boot camp in Tallahassee.

"Oh. He didn't tell me you were home." As retorts go it's a D minus, tops. He knows he's missed a beat, let Gordy chalk another point up on the great cosmic brotherly scoreboard. But now that lead weight is turning to a squirming bag of worms in his guts. What is Gordon doing here?

Gordon laughs a throaty, sinister laugh. "I know. I know. If he'd told me you were coming I would have skipped out too."

"ETA six minutes, asshat. Coming in via the western approach."

"Cool beans. John ate your T-bone, by the way. And I prepared a little something to welcome you home."

He has to land her with Kenny Loggins being blasted at him through the radio, on loop.

He ties the baby up at the jetty, but in one last ditch attempt to stave off the inevitable, he doesn't take the main path straight to the house. Instead he swings down by the beach. Call it the scenic route.

He's pre-empted. John is standing on the beach, his feet bare and his shirt untucked. He presses a cold beer into Scott's hand by way of greeting, like he knew all along this was the way Scott would come. "You're late. Hey."

"Yeah, sorry. Hey." He necks the beer and then balances it on a friendly rock, kneels and strips off his shoes and socks, lets his toes curl into the warm sand. "Home… I guess?"

"Yeah. Feels odd to me too."

While he's bent over he casts a sly look up at his brother, assessing him. It's been six months since John was anything but a flickering holo on his tablet. The threatened mountain man beard has failed to make an appearance, though he's fighting off a smattering of ginger stubble. His hair is down to his ears and he's paler than ever. Scott has never seem him look so, well, so flabby.

"What?" John is always acute to being watched.

"Nothing."

"You're making an 'I am concerned' face."

"I'm not making an 'I am concerned' face. I'm not concerned." The lie comes easily.

He knots his shoelaces together and slings his boots around his neck, rolls up his jeans like he's a kid again. "Come on, I wanna put my feet in the water."

Standing with his feet in the surf he really does feel like a kid. This is where he'd come that morning when he'd left for basic training. He'd wanted to say goodbye, as if the island wouldn't be here when he came back. He realises now that maybe he was right. You can't go home again.

God, he'd been so young, green as a stalk of celery, so worried that he would let Dad down, that he wouldn't be able to live up to the hallowed Tracy Name. Where had that kid gone?

It's been the bones of three years since he's been back to the island. Sure, there had been family meet ups at John's graduation and Gordon's biggest galas and that disastrous Thanksgiving in Grandma's house. There had been other meetings too, two weeks hiking in the Himalayas with John, a camping trip with Alan and Grandma, the seemingly endless round of Tracy Industry events that Dad somehow always manages to finagle him into attending, but when it came to being dragged home, he had always managed to slip the hook. Now here, in the surf, with a southern breeze bringing in the smell of the ocean, he wonders why.

Then he remembers.

"So, did he tell you what this was about?" He doesn't turn towards John.

"Not a word. You?"

"No. Do you think he could be sick?" Skip's dad had died of myeloma late last year. From a distance he had watched the hail, hearty, former ranger sicken and die, shrinking and wizening like an old apple. The idea that something like that could happen to their own indestructible, infuriating, 'impossible is my middle name' Dad seems at once laughable and terrifying.

"No, I don't think so." John shakes his head once but emphatically. "This is something different."

"You think he's being arrested? Fraud? Embezzlement?"

John's nose crinkles. "Much more likely. Or maybe he's planning to move house again."

"Antarctica, this time."

"The Romanche Trench."

"The moon." They both laugh.

John gives him another minute, then kicks him in the back of the knee. "Come on. Dinner time."

Scott retrieves his beer. Going carefully, so as not to disturb the turtle nests, they make for the house.

As they clamber, barefoot, up the cliff path, John tells him, in his matter of fact way, what life in the polar research centre, studying magnetispheric plasma discharges, is like. He speaks with enthusiasm about how his research is progressing and you would have to know him well to see how tightly he's keeping a cap on his disappointment. Fortune 500 companies have been headhunting John since he was 15, but none of them had the lure of WWSA. John's dreamed of space since he was a little kid explaining to his teddy the phases of the lunar cycle. When the Space Agency had come knocking he'd abandoned his PhD in telecommunications to chase his dream.

But the Space Agency brass, maybe just because they saw how gifted John was in the area, or more probably because they were wary of the Tracy name, had stranded him in the research track. Soon enough he'd have a PhD in astrophysics to replace the one he'd left behind, but he was no closer to space now than he had been when he left MIT 18 months ago.

Does that explain the weight gain? John's always been fastidious about every aspect of his life, exercise included. In his head, John's been an astronaut since he was nine years old. Maybe it's just the Arctic diet of seal blubber and spam that's getting to him, but it chills Scott to think that any part of his brother might be willing to give up the dream.

"Hey, it's been so long since I've hit the trails. Tomorrow morning you and I should go for a run."

His attempt at tact hits with all the subtlety of a pie to the face. A small crease of annoyance appears between John's brows. "Yeah Scott, if you like."

There's a little frisson of relief, that although they're thousands of miles apart, although they barely talk now and never see each other, although their lives seem to be on perpendicular trajectories, he still can push his little brother's buttons. John doesn't speak to him again until they're at the house and Scott can't help half a grin.

Gordon's reporting as to the fate of his steak turns out to be an exaggeration. Dad's just firing up the grill as they arrive by the pool. He's engrossed in applying Grandpa's secret sauce with a basting brush onto a rack of prime cuts of meat and will only be distracted long enough to give a cursory wave before he goes back to his careful prep. "You're late."

"Yeah, sorry."

There's an outsider here too. One of Dad's pet boffins stands by the pool, nervously nursing a White Russian. Dad had Scott give him dinner one time. Hissam something…

"Big Brooother!" Scott sidesteps automatically, which is a mistake, because it puts John, who is behind him, right in the path of the stampeding Gordon. John is catapulted straight into the pool.

"Gordon!" John surfaces a second later, gasping and wiping his hair out of his eyes, as incensed as a large marmalade cat.

"Whoops! Sorry, John, my bad. I was aiming for Scotty." Gordon stands poolside with his hands on his hips and grins from ear to ear.

Scott takes this opportunity to hip check Gordon into the pool.

Gordon splutters to the surface. "Oh yeah, real mature, Lieutenant. I bet that-" John jumps on him and is soon making a good attempt at sitting on Gordon's head.

"Heya, Scott." He turns. Virgil, a large wooden salad bowl under one arm, has come out of the kitchen.

Scott doubletakes. "Virg- What are you doing?"

Virgil gives a big shrug. "Uh, mixing potato salad?"

Here. What are you doing here? Virgil should still be in college in Chicago. Gordon should be in Florida. It's nobody's birthday, Mom's anniversary isn't for another ten months. What could be so important that Dad had to drag all four of them back here? What the hell is going on? The worms in his gut are squirming again. He swallows, trying to quell the dread. What if -?

But he doesn't get to finish that thought, because now he's been distracted enough for Gordon and also John - still smarting from the running comment maybe - to lunge out of the pool and seize him about the knees. He's dragged under water.

What follows next is three minutes of knee-elbow-cough-breath-elbow-squirm-breath-splutter-knee.

"Alright you lot, knock it off. We've got dinner in ten." Dad calls a halt and Scott lets go of the headlock he's got on Gordon, feels John's weight drop away from around his waist. His boots and overnight bag are both floating in the shallow end. John wafts them over to him before climbing out.

Gordon whips his shirt off and uses it to towel his face and hair. Underneath he's only got his swim trunks on. "Think I got you that time, bro."

"In your dreams, squirt," It's second nature to respond.

He and John are rapidly dripping a second water feature onto the terrace. Dad throws a towel over each of them. "Upstairs, dry off, then dinner. Gordon, manners!"

Gordon is dribbling water over the dinner table as he picks at the Caesar salad. He grins and shows a mouthful of cherry tomatoes.

Dr Hissam gives them a polite smile, but moves well out of their way as they tramp inside. Virgil has disappeared again.

They leave wet footprints all the way up the steps. "Virgil's here too?" He checks with John, just in case it's heatstroke that's making him see imaginary brothers. "Is Alan?"

"Getting in tonight, apparently. Kyrano took Gran to pick him up."

"John, what the hell's going on?"

John shrugs. "You tell me, Scott. If he confides in anyone, he confides in you."

John heads up a level and Scott ducks into his old room. It is s almost precisely how he left it, though someone has given it a recent air out, so it smells of lavender and not of mildew. Almost everything in his overnight bag - including his electric razor - is sopping wet, so he's forced to go digging in his closet for dry clothes.

Boy, did he wear a lot of orange and mustard when he was at college. He makes a note to donate the red shirt with the dolphin and tuna pattern to Gordon. He finds a pair of old jeans and wriggles into them, towels off his hair, wonders about what John has just said.

"Come home." The call to barracks couldn't have come at a worse moment.

"I can't just-"

"You've got unused leave. Take a week, the week after next."

He'd bristled of course. The automatic assumption of authority, the nonchalant invasion of his privacy, it was all Jeff Tracy 101.

He'd spent the morning pulling people out of the rubble of the American Embassy in Cuba. There'd been a firebomb attack. He'd spent the afternoon arguing with his superiors. The attack hadn't just targeted the embassy, it had taken out four whole blocks in downtown Manilla. There were people there still, dying and in need of help. The GDF's mandate was to help those in need. Cuba fell under the treaty of nations. Why were they buckling to political pressure to assist only those on American soil?

Stubbs had had to drag him outside afterwards. "They think you're an arrogant son of a bitch. A conceited, pompous little rich boy who thinks he can do and say whatever he wants because his daddy's richer than Jobs and a big damn hero to boot."

"I know who my father is." It had been all he could do not to sound like a sulky child.

"Oh good." Stubbs is tiny, fiery, uses her challenge coin more than anyone he's ever met, even though she doesn't drink, and cooks the most amazing Fesenjan, which her Iranian Grandpa taught her how to make. "They think you think they can't touch you. Don't give them a chance to prove you wrong."

"What are you trying to say?" He'd tried to get up and Stubbs had shoved him down again. "That I'm here because of who my father is? I earned my right to be here, same as anyone. I'm one of the top pilots in the unit."

"No, hotshot, I'm telling you that you're lucky you are the best damn pilot in the unit, otherwise you'd be out on your ear because of _who your father is._ "

"What am I supposed to do? It's my job to tell them the things we see on the ground that High Command and The World Council don't. This is wrong. You know it. I know it." It kills him sometimes how like Dad he is. How he can feel himself getting loud and obnoxious and riled up at all the same things, but when Dad talks, when he uses The Voice, people stand back respectfully. They just look at Scott like he's a reckless pup.

"We're soldiers. We do what we're ordered. That's the deal." Stubbs had spelled it out for him, nice and slow, like he was a slow kid.

"A civilian ran the blockade at Bucharest last year, you know? Made it through the air trenches while the entire GDFAF sat around with our thumbs up our asses, managed to get essential supplies to civilians on the other side." He thinks about that Bucharest run a lot lately.

But Stubbs had just rolled her eyes. "And got shot down for his trouble. Tracy, I really don't want to have to attend your court martial."

Now this.

"Come home. It's only a couple of days. John's coming too. It's important."

So he'd come, like a good dog fetched by his master's voice. And now he's here, wishing he could be anywhere else.

He slips out of his room and makes for the downstairs, but halts when Virgil calls his name. He turns.

John had warned him about Virg's attempts to cultivate facial hair, so he doesn't openly guffaw. Actually what hits him is the sensation of having to look up. From his position on the last step of the stairs Virgil is half a head taller than him.

Virgil seems to realise it too, because he hops down off the step. This goes a ways to address the balance, but still leaves Scott feeling disconcerted. When he had left the kid had only come up to the top of his breast bone, but now Scott's only got a bare inch or two on him. His clothes are baggier than ever, shirts piled on shirts. Still self-conscious about puppyfat maybe? And that moustache! It looks like his face should be posted with a sign saying "Caterpillar Crossing".

"Hey Virg."

He remembers the long letters that Virgil used to send him, full of asides and sketches and details of school and island life, sometimes even written out and posted on precious paper. He doesn't remember when those letters stopped coming or when his own holos slackened off. He does remember feeling relieved when they stopped.

He faces up to Virgil. It's a different feeling than with how it is with John, or with Gordon. With Virgil he is looking at his brother and seeing a stranger.

"I thought you could use these." Virgil passes him a clean white t-shirt and a pair of socks.

He accepts them and heads back into his bedroom to change but finds Virgil lurking at the bedroom door.

"How've you been, bud?" He tries as he pulls his shirt over his head. "How's school?"

Virgil had started art school in the fall. Getting him there had required a fight that had ruined Thanksgiving '55 and had left Scott and Dad not speaking for over two months.

"Yeah. It's good." Virgil shifts from foot to foot.

"Hey, and thanks for the Christmas present." The hunting knife Virgil had sent him had been beautiful, perfectly balanced, wonderfully crafted. It had made him the envy of the unit. "Uh, I guess I never got around to sending out gifts this year."

That lie trips out quite easily too. Alan had got a new snowboard. John always needed new telescope lenses and he's had an agreement with Gordon since he turned eighteen that he would pay for Gordon's Playboy yearly subscription and Dad would never find out. But he's got no idea anymore what Virgil would want. The last couple of years he had bought him canvas and paintbrushes, but now that Virg was actually in art college these seemed trivial.

"Don't worry about it," Virgil says. "Hey, can we talk?"

"Sure. How about tomorrow? We could take the catamaran out? Or we could go climbing. Do you still climb?"

"Yeah, I still climb." There's a check of something like irritation in Virgil's voice that has him looking up.

"Right, just, ah, just I wasn't sure. Is something the matter?" He can see now that Virgil's uneasy.

"No. Nothing's the matter. It's just-"

Suddenly he understands. "He's not giving you a hard time, is he, Virg? I've told you before, you do what you want to do. You can't let him push you around."

"I'm not. Scott, I- "

"If Dad had his way we'd all be pilots, right. Imagine, right?" He chuckles.

"Scott, just - "

"I'll talk to him, okay. Don't worry. And for what it's worth I'm really proud of you for pursuing this."

Virgil sags a little, and Scott sees how much this must have been bothering him. "…Thanks Scott."

"Hey, Comrade Tracy, your rabbit food is served." Gordon calls up the stairs. "You too, Lieutenant Windbag."

Scott jabs Virgil in the ribs. "Come on, champ, let's get this over with."

John's lined up the benches on the patio and the table is heaving with food.

They sit down to dinner. Grandpa always did know how to cook a mean steak and so for the first couple of minutes there's nothing but agreeable silence punctuated by demands of "pass the black pepper" and "hey, don't hog all the beans". He, John and Dad tuck into prime cuts of ribeye, while Virgil - who had declared himself a vegan just before starting school - mooches over a Caesar salad, and Gordon plucks at a pair of poached chicken breasts as his eyes make love to the bread basket.

Professsor Hissam nibbles daintily on his lamb cutlet and watches in faint horror and fascination as the Tracy boys go to work.

Mouthful by mouthful conversation starts to return. "Do you still see Ortega and Lieberrr?" Dad asks after his old colleagues, as he helps himself to another spoon of mash.

"Major Lieberr's down in Nicaragua, now. They have her teaching survival skills to the new recruits. I still see Ortega." In fact it has been less than 48 hours since the superior officer threatened him with an insubordination charge if he didn't pull out and leave the Mexican family to the floods and their fate. Ortega hadn't wanted to risk the equipment in further engagement. He quickly changes the subject. "How's Tallahassee?"

"Amazing." Gordon drags his gaze away from the golden glob of butter sliding down John's corn on the cob. "So many girls. Tanned, fit, athletic girls and so competitive. You wouldn't believe- "Gordon catches Dad's eye and breaks off. "And the Olympics and training and 110 per cent. Super important."

"And where are you s-studying?" Professor Hissam asks Virgil as Virgil passes him the salad bowl.

Virgil tries to spear a crouton with a particularly violent jab of his fork, "Hmm, what?"

"Virgil's our resident artist." Scott says, "He's very talented. And we're all very proud to him." He looks to Dad to see how he'll react, but Dad is fishing for the salt and either hasn't heard or is refusing to rise to the bait.

"Subtle as a truck there, Scotty," says Gordon.

It's the Professor who looks confused. "You're an artist? Are you sure?"

"Yeah Virg, show us some artwork."

The table judders and Gordon's feral grin becomes an O of pain. Virgil examines his baby gem morosely. "Maybe another time."

Did Scott imagine the look that passed between his father and the Professor? "Pass the sweet potato if you would, Brains."

John reaches for the bread basket and Gordon nudges it just out of his reach. He tries again and Gordon nudges it a little further. "Cut it out, Gordon."

"You sure you want to be doing that, tubs?"

John drops his fork. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, maybe you're just putting on insulation for those Arctic winters." Gordon takes an extra big slurp of his protein shake.

"Knock it off." Scott picks up the bread basket and puts it in front of John.

"Phew. Good thing big brother's home to settle all our arguments for us." Gordon shoots him a sickly sweet grin. "How do we get along without you, Scot?"

"This isn't an argument." John slices into a bread roll and butters it with deliberate care. It's hard to get him really angry, but Gordon is nothing if not a born button pusher.

"I get it. If I was in your position I'd eat my feelings too."

"Give it a rest, Gordon," Virgil murmurs.

John's cheeks almost match his hair. "Tell me, what does it take to swim up and down a pool a hundred times a day? The average intellectual prowess of a wind up rubber duck, I'd calculate."

The table goes silent. Gordon's grin has frozen on his face. John looks immediately like he's regretting his words. He scoops mange tout onto his plate. "Sorry."

Scott can't believe how quick it's all gone bad, without him even having to contribute, without him even sizing up to Dad yet. John's shoulders are shaking as he takes rapid, shallow breaths. Gordon looks ready for a fight.

"May I be excused?" Virgil doesn't wait for permission, but shoots to his feet, nearly knocking the table over.

"Virgil, sit down!"

"Don't yell at him!" It slips out before he can stop it, a reflex triggered by Dad's use of The Voice.

The whole table seems to be holding their breath. Scott eyes Dad, but Dad isn't looking at him.

Virgil sits down. "Can you pass the potato salad, please, Scott?"

But Dad isn't done. "All of you. I invited Professor Hackenbacker here as a guest. I promised him I had five sons who could… who could manage a simple dinner without tantrums or abuse, but I guess that was too much to hope for. Now, I'm going to finish my dinner. Then we're all going to go upstairs. There's something important I need to share with my sons. Since they're not here, you lot of talking apes will have to do instead."

None of them are hungry anymore, so all four of them sit around and watch as Dad finishes his meal down to the last bite.

"Okay," He puts his knife and fork down, "Let's go upstairs."

They follow him to the den, so he can begin whatever it is that is so important that he needed to trap them on a small volcanic island surrounded by a hundred leagues of ocean to do it.


	2. John - 343 metres per second

**Chapter Two**

 **John - 343m/s**

 ** _In which a squall closes on Tracy Island - Alan Tracy moves a lot of boxes – Virgil Tracy screams into the heart of a thunderstorm – Gordon Tracy uses chocolate fudge as an instrument of rebellion – Scott Tracy learns he must take drastic action and Ben Kyrano does some light aircraft maintenance._**

Dad should have talked to Scott first. In a man not known for his mistakes, this seems like a big one.

Scott, who has listened in taut silence through the entire 45 minute presentation, stands up as the lights come on. "You're crazy."

He does not add, "Old man," but probably wants to. He stalks out of the room without another word.

So, Scott is out.

Or, not out exactly, since there was never an in to be out of in the first place. There was no line in the sand, no oath to take, no offer. Just Dad, speaking plainly. This is what I want to do. This is why. This is how. This is the equipment. These are the people I need.

Ellipses.

The implication lingers like the smell of Grandma's cooking.

Two pilots, two astronauts and an aquanaut.

Of course, break that down a bit further and it gets more complex. More like five pilots, five astronauts, five aquanauts, an engineering, medical and demolition corps and a couple of green berets for good measure, all rolled up in five individuals on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

No one has ever faulted his father for his ambition.

What he's got to work with, however, is one pilot, one astronaut-candidate, one aspiring Olympian, one school kid and one art major.

Or rather, now he's got no pilots. And the art major is starting to look shaky.  
"I'm going for a run."

"Virgil." It's grown dark while Dad's been talking, and John can hear the warning in his father's voice. The last thing Dad needs right now is Virgil busting his ankle or splitting his face open if his foot catches on a mangrove root out there on the trails.

"It's okay," Virgil heads off the argument before it can happen. "I'll take the north trail. That's well lit the whole way to the summit." He's gone without waiting for Dad to reply.

And that leaves the four of them. Professor Hackenbacker sits with his hands between his knees, twisting and untwisting his fingers. Gordon looks whey-faced, like he might just get sick.

"Helloooo?"

Before anyone can say anything else, Alan bounds up the stairs. He's carrying no less than five full duffels slung like bandoliers across his chest and is wearing a ski-coat with the hood up and the collar zipped to the hollow of his throat. He must be sweltering.

He pauses at the top of the stairs as if he knows something's wrong, nearly overbalances as the counterweight of the duffels swings him back towards the abyss, and then, recovering himself, breaks into a huge grin.

He thumps into John's side, whacking him hard with the ballast of his baggage, "Johnny! Hey! What're you doing here? You shoulda told me you were coming home!"

John knocks the hood back to knuckle the crown of Alan's head, "Hiya, kid. What are you wearing, Alan?"

"Heat acclimation. There's an average twelve degree Celsius difference between Boston and the island, you know?" He beams and shrugs his load off his shoulders. One by one the duffels drop to the floor.

"Alan Tracy, if I catch you dumping your stuff on the floor the only thing you're going to be acclimating to is a week of scooping palm fronds out of the pool. Your room. Now."

Grandma comes up the stairs. Kyrano is with her. They're both laden with boxes full of Alan's belongings. Kyrano's even got Alan's snowboard. At any other time John would think to be surprised that Alan needs this much stuff for a one week spring vacation.

Alan grins and picks up his five duffels, gives Dad a quick, affectionate shoulder bump and heads towards his bedroom. He gives Gordon a wide berth, like someone skirting a pitbull on a short chain, but Gordon doesn't even seem to notice. "Hey, Alan."

Things must be really spinning loose in Gordon's head right now if he can't even muster a "Heya, reptile-brain", or a "Yo, Ugly".

"Does one of you big strapping boys want to give your poor grandma a hand, maybe?"

Grandma's words snap John out of his mini-fugue. He goes and grabs the backpack she's been towing up the stairs as Dad grabs the box of assorted hiking boots out of her arms.

"Heya, kiddo." She squeezes his arm.

"Hey, Grandma."

"John. You've grown again." Kyrano shakes his hand and John can feel the warm, familiar callouses. Kyrano's always treated him like an adult. He's looking at him now, his head cocked just slightly to the side, assessing him.

"I don't think that's possible," he says, truthfully.

To his great relief, he had finally completed his last growth spurt eighteen months ago. For three years he had measured himself on a carefully calibrated altimeter, noted down every millimetre, calculated rates of change, plotted his measurements again and again on standardised growth charts, each time coming up with the same answer, that he was in the ninetieth centile for height. Every extra centimetre had caused him an agony of anxiety. Scott was 184.2 centimetres, less than 8 millimetres below the maximum height restriction for almost every modern space craft, Dad was only 11 millimetres shorter than that. If John ended up taller than Scott he would never have been able to fly. At one point, in his last year of school, he'd spent weeks cutting his calcium intake to zero, trying to retard bone growth. He'd tried crash diets and starvation, spending weeks eating nothing but kidney beans until Grandma had busted him and pointed out that all astronauts had to have a DEXA scan that showed sufficient bone density if they wanted to be selected for long haul missions.

Her lips purse now, and she seems about to say something. He cuts her off by giving her a quick peck on the cheek and scooping up a box of textbooks. He heads upstairs to Alan's room.

Alan is just wriggling into a t-shirt and shorts made for a much smaller Alan. He's sprouted again since Christmas. John can't help a chuckle at the sight of those bony knees.

Alan shoots him a sharp look, and then seems to decide that John wasn't laughing at him. He flops down on the bed, among the nest of his stuff.

"Ahh. It's good to be home. I'm so glad you're here. Kyrano let me fly the last ten miles." His words tumble and trip on each other as he tries to get all his thoughts out at once. "Hey, how's the Arctic Circle? What's it like in the research station? You fight any polar bears yet?"

"Fighting bears sounds more Scott's speed than mine."

"You could fight a bear. You could totally fight a bear. Or maybe a sea lion, they're pretty deadly." He sighs. "The Northern lights, that is so cool. I really got to see them some time. Will you take me?"

"Sure. But you have already seen them." On February Fourth, the third one, Dad had taken them to Svalbard, brought them hiking on the glaciers and to see the seed bank repository.

"That's not the same." Alan rolls his eyes. "Back then, I thought they were made by Santa Claus."

John lets his face fall. "They're not? I'm going to have to throw out my thesis."  
Gordon sways into the room, trying to keep hold of the centre of gravity of the towering, wobbling pyramid of boxes he's holding. Ultimately he gives up and lets the boxes tumble onto a beanbag. "You could provision a private army with this crap, Al. How long do you plan on staying?"

"Forever." Alan heaves a dramatic sigh, flops back on the bed again and then sits up suddenly. "I mean, not forever. I don't know. Grandma said to bring everything, so I brought everything." He turns to John and under the bravado John catches that flicker of apprehension. "You don't know why, do you?"

And suddenly John's blood boils.

 _Yes._

John hates to lose his temper. He hates being put in the same category as Gordon and his stupid childish outbursts. But right now he's wondering if Scott doesn't have the right of it, after all. Maybe he should go down and sock Dad in the jaw and tell him he's a lunatic, he's a goddam menace and he's to stay the hell away from his brothers or there will be hell to pay.

Because Dad has pulled Alan from school. Dad has lied to them all. Dad told them to go out and make their way in the world, while secretly planning this. Dad has made them all pieces in his private game.

 _Dad wants to send him to space_.

"Strand you in space," Scott will say later, as he loads up his plane. "He wants to strand you in space."

"Not necessarily," John will say, sitting on the end of the jetty, tugging splinters out of the wooden pylons, having failed to convince Scott to stay, even for the night

"And who is going to be your relief? Alan?"

"You could do it. You're space rated. It wouldn't take you more than nine months to train up to WWSA standards. If you think about it–"

"I'm not thinking about it, because we're not doing it. End of story. Now are you sure I can't drop you somewhere?"

But that will come later. Right now John's got to lie to Alan.

"No, sprout, I don't know why. Ask Dad."

He doesn't know which cuts deeper, the first moment, when that flicker of hurt and betrayal glances across Alan's face, or the second moment, when Alan grins and slips back under the mask of normal happy-go-lucky kid. "It's so weirrrd you're here!"

"Grandma didn't tell you we were coming home?"

"We? Hey, is Kayo here too?" Alan's suddenly a live wire again.

"No, not Kayo." Last time he'd checked in on Kayo she'd been somewhere in the Israeli desert. When he had sent her a polite wave to see what she was doing there, she had answered, "Training" and promised him that if he ever hacked her locator again she would personally promote his study of astronomy by making him see a whole new set of stars.

"So it's just you and Gordon?" Alan's disappointed.

"And Virgil and Scott."

"Scott's here?" Alan bolts upright. Alan and John have always been close, sharing star charts, puzzles, coding, but Alan hero-worships Scott.

"Yeah, he flew in just–"

Alan is on his feet and out of the room before John can form another word.

"Hey! Hey, Alan, wait."

Alan rolls downstairs, giddy with excitement, passes Gordon, who either misses or just ignores John's urgent signals to grab him, and tumbles onto the first landing.

All John can think of is what sort of catastrophe might occur if Scott were to see Alan now, all surface excitement and bubbling undercurrent of anxiety. He briefly evaluates options for where he might go to ground if necessary to avoid the fallout and decides nowhere on the island will be safe. Forget the international community. Dad will need rescuing himself if Scott runs into Alan now.

"Alan, hold up, please."

But it is Kyrano who Alan runs into first. "Whoa, there." He lariats an arm around Alan's waist and pulls him back up the stairs.

"Kyrano, Scott's home!" It's mostly jubilation, but turns into a whine right on the tail end of _home_ , as Kyrano lifts him back up the stairs.

"You heard your grandmother. Unpack first, everything else can come after. Come, I'll help." He winks at John and as he passes murmurs, "You're brother's out on the dock."

John hurries down there, but Scott's not in the mood to be reasoned with. In fact he's in full on fight or flight mode, churning with anxiety to be as far away from his family as possible.

Scott's been away three years, now he can't stay for three hours.

They are usually on opposite sides of this argument, Scott pestering him to attend one of Gordon's races or come to the launch of some new Tracy Industries jet and John piling on excuses as to why he can't make it. He knows how to dance the dance even if he's dancing it backwards, the tired arguments, the dumb jokes about avoiding Grandma's cooking, and the coup de grace that will always bring the dance to a close.

"Can't you just stay a little while? Alan's here. He wants to see you. He'll be hurt."

"I know. But I just can't… I can't do it, John. Make some excuse. Tell them I was called away, an emergency. Please."

Scott's been blowing up at Dad since he was a kid. John's been his sounding board as he huffs and snarls and rails against their father's injustices, real and perceived, more times than he can count. But this is different. He's never seen Scott so close to panic. He's never seen Scott run. "Scott, are you going to be okay?"

"Yes!" Scott sucks in a breath, like it's the last he's ever going to have a chance to take. "Yes. But I've got to go, John."

He leaves Scott to his final checks and walks back to the house. A squall is closing in on the island, blowing up quick and fierce, as they tend to do. By the time he reaches the patio, the first plump rain drops are hitting the pool.

He finds Gordon in the kitchen.

Scott had sent John a copy of Gordon's nutritional regimen once, as an attachment to a mail marked, "Oats for Our Champion Race Horse". The time when professional athletes could race on a club sandwich and a couple of beers is a century gone. Nutrition has been rendered down to a science as precise as organic chemistry. The Olympic Committee pours millions into it every year, hoping to do legally what teams of the past had done with erythropoietin and amphetamines. Everything Gordon eats is prescribed, controlled and monitored.

On an ordinary training day Gordon has to consume 9,000 calories, on a race day, 12,000. Even on a lay day like today he has to eat 6,000 calories, in carefully regulated portions, at even intervals. He eats avocados by the pound, lakes of wholewheat pasta, enough grilled chicken breasts to depopulate a small poultry farm, all washed down by five noxious energy shakes a day. There are detailed specifications of the quantity of blood, urine and stool samples that have to be supplied to the nutrition unit to ensure he is fully compliant.

Nowhere in the 78 page document did it mention double chocolate fudge sundae ice cream eaten directly out of a two litre carton as being part of that approved regimen.

The subcutaneous monitor Gordon wears, the one that transmits real time telemetry on Gordon's blood sugar, amino acid and lipid levels back to the American Swimming League's Atlanta headquarters, lies on the counter.

Gordon glares at John as if daring him to say something. "So, he gone? Figures."

John gives a shrug. "Where's Alan?"

"Den. Hey, John?"

"Yeah."

"No. Nothing. Forget it." He levers another spoon of ice-cream from the tub.  
Alan is sprawled out on the couch in the den, watching Blake's 7 reruns. John crashes down next to him. Alan thrusts a bowl of popcorn under his nose but doesn't say anything.

Five minutes later there comes shouting from downstairs and enough curse words to turn the air blue.

Scott bounds upstairs. He is soaked through to his skin and shivering, though with cold or just fury John can't really be sure. "Kyrano! Kyrano! You think this is funny, you filthy son of a –"

"Hey, Scott."

The two words from Alan stop Scott in his tracks. He sways like he's been struck. John can see, almost feel, the whole body wince that goes through him. Alan's gone pale, shrunk back a little into the pillows. John gives his foot a tap to try and tell him it will be okay.

Scott shudders again. "Alan. Hi."

Alan nearly kicks John in the face as he jumps up. His bare feet slap against the polished wood. He thumps into Scott, fastens his arm around him, buries his head in his shirt. The move surprises John. Alan will offer fist bumps, high fives, shoulder-thumps to show affection, but he's been too cool now for a couple of years for hugging.

"Heya, Allie." For a second it seems Scott will just stand there, as rigid as if he's still on the parade ground. Then he wraps his arms around Alan and pulls him in closer. "You've grown again. I'm getting you all wet, dude."

"Welcome home," says Alan, his voice muffled. "I'm glad you're home."

"Me too, Alan."

Grandma comes upstairs. She's got a tray full of mugs of steaming cocoa and a face like thunder. "Scott Tracy!"

Scott wilts. "Hi, Grandma."

She gives him the evil eye. "Well, you haven't been dismembered and you don't have a kitchen knife stuck in your innards, the only reasons I can think of that would explain that sort of fuss. What is the matter with you? You are supposed to be setting an example for your brothers."

"Sorry, Grandma. It's –"

"It's what?"

"Some of my engine parts are missing. Dad must have asked Kyrano to–"

"Good grief! And that's a good reason to go teaching your little brother the extended air force vocabulary, is it?"

Alan sniggers.

"Sorry, Grandma." Scott looks at the toes of his sneakers, like he's sixteen again and being chastened for sneaking out. He's contrite, but defiant. "But if he thinks he can force me to stay-"

"You're leaving?" Alan grasps hold of Scott's forearm as if he can stop him from going. "Scott…"

Scott looks to first Grandma, then John for help, finds none. "No Al, no, just–"

"I asked Ben to do a little maintenance on your plane." Grandma's the only person John knows who calls Kyrano by his first name. "Heaven knows it looks like it needs it. And you shouldn't be flying out of here tonight anyway. It's not safe."

"Grandma, I can fly through one little storm." Scott's rage is dispelling into petulance.

"You know well that's not what I meant, Scott Tracy."

And that's the end of it. Were it Dad or Kyrano there would be shouting and probably broken furniture, but even at his angriest Scott isn't brave or foolhardy enough to take on their grandmother. "Sorry, Grandma."

Grandma is always gracious in victory. Her gaze softens, "Now come and give your Grandma a hug. Look at you. You're a string bean. Are they feeding you right in that air force?"

"Yes, Grandma."

"And you're eating your vegetables? Even the broccoli?"

Alan laughs and elbows Scott in the side.

Grandma comes to give him his hug, but seeing just how wet he is, changes her mind. "On second thoughts go change those clothes before you catch your death of cold."

Scott shifts from foot to foot. "Yes, Grandma."

"Alan, you're almost as wet. Go change into your pyjamas."

"Aww, Grandma…"

"I said change, I didn't say bed. When you come back we can all have some cocoa. And as for you," she turns to John. "See if there's any ice-cream left, or has your brother eaten it all."

"Yes, Grandma."

* * *

He dreams of Mom that night, for the first time in many years. He's four and they're sitting in their old kitchen in San Francisco as she explains to him where Dad goes when he's away for these long spans of time. Scott is on the next stool over, but in the logic of dreams, it is the adult Scott who sits there in his Captain Scarlet pyjamas, asking questions about orbital payloads and automated docking procedures. And when Scott asks her whether they're using nitrogen tetroxide or hydrazine propellant – or maybe he asked what moon cheese tastes like, it's hard to be sure – she sighs and says, "You'll have to ask Dad that, Scotty."

"How can I? He's not here. He's never here."

John wakes to the sound of rain against his window. The wind screams as it works long fingers into the cracks of the skylight, trying to peel the window back, shake the house asunder. His tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth.

The recollections of his dream are both sharp and fuzzy at once, slippery edges blurring and blending with his memories. Was it the day Scott had told him to his dismay, that no, that wasn't a balloon under Mommy's dress, it was yet another new baby brother? Was it the day that Mom had played games and sung and bribed them with sweets and never let on that NASA had lost contact with Dad's ship and had told her to prepare for the worst?  
He gropes for the tumbler of water he keeps by his bed, finds nothing. He lies back into the groove of his pillow. The pillow case is damp with sweat.

Sometime in the night he's managed to kick his sheets into a tangled nest at the bottom of his bed.

He takes a deep breath and turns his gaze skyward.

The skylight is positioned just above his bed. When he's restless and can't sleep – which is often – he will gaze at it for hours, his own portal to the universe, watch the stars and wish himself up among them. In Alaska he will bundle up in half a dozen layers and go out to watch the aurora borealis, calmed by the thought of the ionised particles interacting with the magnetosphere, having been carried 90 million miles by the solar winds.  
But tonight there are no stars, no sky, just the runnels of rain beating against the window.

Now he remembers.

He's been dreaming of the day Scott ran away.

He had been there when Scott set off to find his real family. He remembers the anxious flutterings in his stomach as Scott packed a clumsily assembled sandwich into his rucksack, the deep yawning chasm of confusion opening up in his world, because if Dad wasn't Scott's real dad did it mean that he wasn't John's dad either? Or did it mean that Scott wasn't his real brother?

He had asked to come and Scott had said no, that he was too little and too slow, but that if he was good, if he kept quiet as Scott had told him and lied when Mom asked him where Scott was, maybe when Scott found his real family he would ask them to adopt John too.

So, John has let him go, had kept silent for three precious hours. Had crouched at the bars of Virgil's playpen, pudgy, sticky, cranky, _loud_ , Virgil and wondered, _are you really my brother, or was that all a lie too?_

Finally Mom had realised what had happened, had tracked Scott down to Kanavan's barn where he'd been sheltering, had brought him home. While she was out Virgil had climbed out of his cot and pulled a drawer of knives down on top of his head.

John shifts, kicks off the last of his sheets, wonders why he's thinking about that night, now.

There'd been a storm then night too. It had been all that stopped Scott getting as far as the highway. He remembers the blue and red light battering his rain-streaked window. He remembers how funny-smelling Mrs Dallow had shaken the drops from her blue-rinse as she arrived to look after him. He remembers how Mom's face had been damp as she squeezed him too tight before she took off to the hospital with Scott in tow.

And he remembers how the shadows had seemed to grow deep and huge without Scott there in the opposite bed. He remembers pressing his nose against the window glass to count stars as Dad had taught him to do when he was afraid and how he could see nothing but the thick smear of rain and the flashes of light as the lightning bared its teeth.

Then the thunder had roared.

Even now, thinking back, he can feel an edge of that terror, how his heart had walloped in his chest until it seemed like it was going to burst. How the noise would never seem to end. How he had covered his ears with his hands and bit into his pillow, lest Mrs Dallow hear him and try to come upstairs to comfort him.

Then he had remembered the commcast, the one that Mom used to play them stories sometimes, the one that was sitting next to his bed.

Even at that age he'd been able to circumvent the simple protocol that kept the comm out of the main network. It had been Mom he had meant to call, but it was Scott whose face had appeared, his face cast in the bluish sheen of hololight. He might be lying on the pillow next to him. "John?"

"Is Mom there? Scott, is Mom there?"

"She's gone for a break." He'd been lying on a pallet on the floor of Virgil's room, would lie there all night. His eyes were red. "She'll be back."

"Is Virgil okay?"

"I don't know. The doctor gave him something to make him sleep. She said they would watch him overnight."

Scott had turned the camera just enough, that suddenly there was a ghostly white cot projected into the middle of John's bedroom. Through the bars he could watch the small shivering hump in the blankets, rising and falling in time, which was their little brother. "Oh."

"John?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry. I never meant this. I never meant you weren't my brothers. I never meant-"

And then the thunder had roared again and John had buried himself, trembling, in his blankets as the fear overtook him again, and Scott had called his name over and over and tried to reach out, tried to touch him, though his hand went straight through. "Johnny. John. Please. I promise I'll never run away again."

"It's the sky, Scott. The sky's gone away."

But then he had heard it, soft and tinny on Scott's end of the line, the roll of thunder. And Scott had laughed softly. "The sky hasn't gone away. You hear that? Listen."

And when the thunder had next shook the house, Scott had counted down for him, "Five, four, three, two…"

And then the answering riposte had come and Scott had said, "Two miles. You're two miles away from me. You see? The sky's not gone. It's right there. It's always right there."

After that he hadn't been afraid of the thunder anymore. He'd strained his ears, listening for it, for the sign that he and Scott and Virgil were under the same sky. And Scott had left the camera running all night, so that every time he woke he could see Virgil's cot projected in the space next to his bed, and watch the gentle rise and fall of his breathing.

John runs his hand through his hair, It's sticky with sweat. The room is stifling and his throat is parched. He pulls himself out of bed and goes downstairs.  
He, Virgil and Alan have rooms on the top level, while Gordon's room is on the bottom floor pinioned between Dad and Scott, to reduce the chances that they will all wake up waist deep in cinnamon flavoured foam, as had happened once when Gordon was nine years old.

The door to Alan's room is shut tight, but Virgil's is open and the bed has not been slept in. Downstairs the hallway lights are on.

"You could always start there." Grandma's voice is soft. She's standing, half in and half out of Gordon's bedroom in a pink and blue polka-dot dressing gown and fluffy slippers. "He misses you. We all do."

She half-turns when John comes downstairs and gives him a smile but does not leave the doorway. Grandma's always had a soft spot for Gordon and a tolerance for his antics. Since puberty curdled his sense of humour she's also the person he's most likely to talk to without snapping or waspish asides.

"Oh, he'll grow out of it," she had told John when he'd ask her why she put up with it. "Just a stormy patch at the moment. You'll see. One day soon you're going to turn around and find Gordon's become a really fantastic grown up. Give it a year." And then had added "It's Virgil i'm worried about," which John still doesn't understand.

He waves to Grandma and pads downstairs. The den is dark, but a blush of blue electronic light rises out of the stairwell from the kitchen.

He finds Professor Hackenbacker sitting at the kitchen counter. There's a glass of milk at his elbow and a triptych of data flows spread out around him.

"Clean slate protocol, what's that?"

Hackenbacker squeaks and jumps a foot off his chair when John comes up behind him. His glasses fly off and he knocks his tumbler over with his elbow, sending the milk all down his trousers and onto the floor.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Professor." John picks up the glasses, which appear undamaged, and gives them a polish on the edge of his t-shirt, wiping the milk-spatters away.

Hackenbacker blinks owlishly at him for a moment, then goes to mop up the spilled milk. "Y-you don't have to call me P-P-Professor, you know. I was only an Associate P-Professor at Cambridge."

"Dr Hackenbacker then."

"H-Hiram is fine, Gordon. Or B-B-B-Hiram."

"It's John, actually, Doctor." He hands him back his glasses.

"S-s-sorry, John." Hackenbacker pushes his glasses back onto his nose, peers at John with a mix of curiosity and suspicion. "Thank you."

John goes around to the fridge, takes out a fresh carton of milk and fills a glass with water for himself. Dr Hackenbacker watches him as he moves about the kitchen, clearly unsettled by his presence. "C-c-can't sleep?"

"Not really." The rain drums against the glass. "Jet lag, I suppose."

John tries to study Hackenbacker without appearing too. He's younger than he thought he'd be. Not Dad's generation, more likely a couple of years older than Scott. He can see his Adams' apple bobbing as he swallows.

Dad had sent him a portfolio of Hackenbacker's work about a year ago, with a note, "Just made an interesting find. Think you'll like him. See attached." The range and depth of his interests was breath-taking. John had met a few people who had claimed to be omni-disciplinary scientists but Hackenbacker was the first person who seemed to have an actual genuine right to that title. He had first-authored papers on organic chemistry, materials science, particle physics and aeronautics, even one on space medicine. It had been partially the chance to meet him that had lured John home in the first place.

"If you have time before you leave, Doctor. I'd love to ask you some questions about your thesis." His PhD had been on the theoretical applications of nano-construction technology in the assembly of space-stations in low orbit. John had overslept for the first time in years last May because he'd been up until three reading the whole thing.

"You read it? You mean you read the abstract?"

"And the rest of it. It's a very interesting field."

"Oh, thank you." Hackenbacker fiddles with his glasses. "It definitely has applications."

"I'm not sure I'm ready to trust my life to it just yet."

"No, nano-construction is still only at a stage where it can't produce anything b-bigger or more complex than a bird house. At the moment 3D printing is still the more efficient option. But give it t-time."

There's a fruit plate in the fridge as well. John takes it out and puts it between them, takes a grape. "Is that why you're working for my dad? To get funding to work on nano-construction?"

Out over the water sheet lightning flashes. Automatically he finds himself counting. Five, four, three…

The thunder rolls over the house.

In the sickly light of the holoscreen there are deep shadows under Hackenbacker's eyes. He fidgets. "No. T-that's not the reason. Your father was a hero of mine. The moon landings, his actions in the war, his work on the first Dyne engines and the way he released them without patent. It was one of his scholarship funds that allowed me to go to u-uni. When I met him at Artotec… It's very rare for the man to live up to the legend."

"And you thought my Dad lived up to the legend?"

"M-more. He seemed so sincere. I thought he took this seriously. I thought…"

"You thought this project was more than something for his dilettante sons to play at?"  
Even in the half-light John can see Hackenbacker blush. He looks away.

John can't pretend he doesn't understand either. "Clean Slate, is that a self-destruct protocol?"

Hackenbacker nearly spills his milk again. "H-how did you know?"

John shrugs. "It's what I'd ask for, if I was in your position."

"I d-didn't ask for it, he offered. Your f-father offered. One click authorisation to t-terminate the project at any point between design stages and completion. All plans and blueprints scrubbed from Tracy Industry servers. Complete destruction of the prototypes. The whole project scrapped." He brings up the icon for Clean Slate, fiddles with it. "I just have to say the word…"

"Are you going to use it?"

"Honestly, I don't hold out any hope it will actually work."

"If my Dad says it'll work, it'll work." And that's Dad. Dad will destroy the project, flush millions of dollars and his dreams away rather than compromise his promise to one engineer. "Are you going to use it?" he asks again.

"Do you want me too?"

John stares across the counter, surprised and for a moment, speechless. He licks his lips.

"You knew, didn't you?"

Scott had asked him that down on the dock that evening, just before John had left to go back to the house. "Virgil had no idea. I definitely hadn't. Dad might as well have slapped Gordon in the face with a wet mackerel. But you didn't seem surprised at all. You knew. Had he told you about it before today?"

"No, he never told me." He had sought refuge in technical accuracy.

"But you knew, all the same."

So maybe a part of him had wondered why Dad had poached a world class engineer from Artotec and then failed to integrate him into any of his major projects. So maybe, just maybe, Gordon's cracks about Supervillain Island were starting to get to him. So maybe one Wednesday night he had decided to hack into the Tracy Industry secure servers and visit Dad's personal vault, just to reassure himself that there weren't any death rays coming up in their near future.

In some ways what he found was bigger and abdder than any death ray.

"No," he says to Hackenbacker. "No, I don't want you to use it."

Gently, he guides Hackenbacker's finger away from the icon. "My Dad gets these notions sometimes, but he can be talked out of them." And that's the biggest lie of his life. "Talk to him, tell him you want pilot approval. He will come around."

"I don't think…"

"Don't let your amazing machines go to waste, Doctor. Not on our account. You'll find someone more suitable." No, wait, that's the biggest lie of his life.

"There are good people out there. In the morning I'll make you a list."

"A list? A list of trained astronauts with expertise in long range communications, datamining and logistics who would be prepared to take on a long term space mission and also be able to double-job as a p-pararescue operator?" A trickle of sarcasm drips into Hackenbacker's voice. "Do you know a lot of people like that?"

"I know one," says John, and this at least isn't a lie. "It'll be a short list."

Hackenbacker peers at him again and his expression seems to soften a little. "I'll consider what you say."

"Thank you." He rises. "I should try to get some sleep. Good night, Doctor."

"Good night, G-G-John."

He leaves Hackenbacker to his milk and schematics and walks back upstairs.

He finds Scott on the fourth floor, his arm resting on the lintel of Virgil's door, his head resting on his arm. Virgil must have slipped in through the side entrance, because he's asleep in bed.

Asleep, Virg really does look like a kid again, despite the growth spurt that's got his feet dangling over the end of the bed. The summer before he had insisted on growing his hair down to his shoulders and a week before he left for college he had shaved off the left side altogether to give him that lopsided Neilan Trevor look that was all the rage among the art crowd. Gordon had laughed himself sick, until in an uncharacteristic temper, Virgil had threatened to shave off all his hair as he'd slept. He'd also tried to grow a pair of Trevor inspired mutton chops, the results of which were, well, patchy. He's at least back to short back and sides now, but his mutton chops – lamb chops were probably more apt – still cling valiantly to his face. Nothing makes him seem more like a kid than this pallid attempt to look like a grown up.

Lightning flashes and in his head John counts.

Five, four…

Thunder roars.

And Virgil breathes in and out.

"I'm going to do it," says John.

Scott doesn't turn, doesn't speak, doesn't give any indication that he's heard or that he's even aware John is there.

"Scott, did you hear me? I'm going to be Dad's space monitor."

"Keep your voice down." He half-turns to look at John. His face is inscrutable in a way Scott's face so rarely is. He's never looked more like Dad.

"Dad doesn't know yet. There are things I have to do before I'm ready, but those are my intentions. I thought you should be the first to know."

"I never pegged you for a fool, John." Scott's voice is hard as a diamond.

"Scott…"

"He's using you. He's pretending to give you exactly what you want so you'll do what he says, but he's manipulating you, just like always. Are you going to let him put Virgil in one of those rockets? Put Alan? Are you going to ask Gordon to give up on the Olympics to suit Dad's ego?"

Scott glances back into the room where Virgil lies and John realises suddenly that for Scott nothing has changed. He is still seeing that white cot, and the pudgy little baby who he thinks he failed.

John shakes his head. "It's not about Dad's ego. It's about me. I want to do it, Scott. And… I'm the best person for the job."

Scott gives him a look, and suddenly John's a little kid again, clutching his teddy, having his big brother tell him that he's running away from home to find his real brothers, his real family.

But John's not a kid anymore and neither is Scott and he has to forge on, "You're the best person for the job too, Scott. You know you are. You're smart and capable and brave and you're the best pilot I've ever met. This could be so much more than just Dad's ego. It could be –"

"Stop." Scott is looking at him, and it's like he's looking at a stranger. And it feels like something, something big and old, just broke. "The rest of the world can go hang. My job is to protect them. To protect you. Even if it's only from yourselves. But if you want to side with Dad - "

He tries to be patient. "There aren't sides, Scott."

He wants to explain it, except he can't find the words. He doesn't know if Alan will ever be serious enough to be part of this or Gordon will ever be interested enough. A small treacherous part of him doubts that Virgil would ever be capable enough. But he knows for himself that this is right. He knows it in the marrow of his bones.

And he knows somewhere deep down that's what Scott must be feeling too.

And he knows it's killing him.

He tightens his jaw. "There aren't sides. But if there were, it's Dad's side that is going to win."

Scott gives a bark of mirthless laughter.

"It's who you are, Scott. More than any of us you're Dad's son."

"That's why I've got to stop him." Scott turns away. "Go to bed, John. It's late."

He goes upstairs and leaves Scott alone in the corridor. For all John knows Scott will stand there all night.


	3. Alan - Omelettes Without Breaking Eggs

**Chapter Three**

 **Alan - Omelettes Without Breaking Eggs _  
_**

 _In which it is the morning after the night before – Scott Tracy plans a trip – John Tracy writes a list with one name on it – Virgil Tracy receives a shock – Gordon Tracy answers a question with a question and pancakes and nachos heal old wounds_

No matter what Gordon says, Alan's not stupid. He knows that he's being pulled out of school.

The teachers all seem to know before he does. Coach benches him, gives his spot in all the scrimmages to Watts. Mr Bering stops him from putting his name down as a candidate to run for student council. On the last day of term, Ms Olin, his favourite teacher, gives him a beautiful stereogram of MGC1300, her favourite galaxy. He asks the principal if anything is wrong and she tells him, no, of course not and gives him a worried smile.

He's so certain that something is wrong, that when his dorm mate, Ken, declares he's starting a band and would Alan play lead guitar, rather than just being psyched, he tells Ken that maybe they ought to wait and hold auditions after spring break.

Then Grandma turns up with a borrowed pickup and he's sure.

His gran has always given it to him straight. After all, she's the one who set him right about the birds and the bees when a reconnoitre of his older brothers got him nothing more than a lot of blushing and stammering from Virgil, a link to some anatomical diagrams from John and a story about teeth in unlikely places from Gordon. But now even she seems evasive.

"Try not to worry about it, kiddo. Let's get you settled in for the week, then we'll talk to your dad. You've got plans for spring break, don't you?"

He sure does. Kyrano has promised to fly him out to the Great Barrier to go scuba diving and in the middle of the week he's hoping to catch a pretty epic Aquairiad shower. After three months away, he's looking forward to being home under familiar skies. John says there was a time when he thought of those stars as strange, but Alan can't remember very much about when he was very small and they all lived in San Francisco. To him, his stars have always been the southern stars.

And when he gets home it's great, because his brothers are here, all of them safe and home under one roof in the way they haven't been for years. And it's amazing. He can finally finish rebuilding that bike he started with Scott three summers ago, and show John the pictures he took of Jupiter this spring and go swimming with Virgil in the sea caves on the western shore. And they can all sit around until after midnight playing Texas Hold 'Em for jelly beans and he won't even care if Gordon wants to play too.

That's how it is supposed to be in his head. Except in reality it's not like that at all.

He's awake hours before dawn, alive with anticipation. It should be the first day of break, Christmas morning sort of anticipation, but it's not. It's the other kind, where there's a core of dread, buried in the good feelings like a Macadamia nut in the middle of a chocolate. It's what Virgil used to call, "getting a case of the Fourthies".

He keeps thinking about the way Scott had gripped the neck of his t-shirt until his knuckles were white when he hugged him and how John's face had looked as he lied to him and the way Dad had stood out on the balcony as they had all drunk their cocoa, and had taken a long time to smoke a single cigar. His dad doesn't smoke.

A little before six he gets up and pulls back on his t-shirt and shorts. It's always a good idea to get up early on the first day of break and cook your own eggs before Grandma can offer to cook them for you.

The sunrise is a daub of raspberry paint on the horizon. There's a pool of spilled milk on the floor. He mops the milk up and gets out the skillet. A minute later he hears soft footsteps on the stairs.

He looks up, wondering who it will be. Not Dad, he always takes the back stairs down to the gym in the morning so he can field calls from the London office before close of business there as he works out. Not Kyrano either, or he wouldn't hear him coming. He worries for a second that it may be Gordon, on his way to the pool, but it's Scott who trots down the stairs, in running shorts and a Yale hooded sweat shirt.

"He-ey." Alan cracks two eggs into a bowl. "Want a cheese and bacon omelette?"

He knows last night was terrible, knows that Scott didn't stay for him or John or anyone else but only because Grandma made him, knows that John's weird and jumpy, knows that Virgil was out until well after three, heard his shower running for forty minutes when he came back. Knows that something has happened and that they're not telling him, because they think he can't handle it, because they think he's a _kid._

He beats the bowl so hard it rocks towards the edge of the counter and he has to reach out and steady it. He knows all this, but it doesn't mean he's giving up. "Or I can do 'em scrambled."

"I think I'm going to go for a run first." Scott's not looking at him.

"Hey, I could go with you." He turns the hob off. "My mile's getting faster all the time. I could show you–"

"Maybe next time, Alan." Scott's tone kills any argument.

"Oh. Okay." Alan breaks another egg into the bowl, but cracks it too hard, so shell splatters into the bowl and yolk goes all over his hand.

A few moments later John comes into the kitchen, also dressed for running. His taupe sweatshirt is emblazoned with MIT. He gives that slight eyebrow raise that is the Johnny version of surprise when he sees them. "Morning." He goes to fill a water bottle from the tap.

"Morning." Scott is stretching out his pectorals. There's something in his voice that makes Alan look around.

"I'm going to take the east trail," says John.

"So am I," Scott looks John up and down and Alan gets a sort of plummeting feeling in his stomach. "Shouldn't be a problem."

John lets out a little chuff of chilly laughter. "I'll see you later, Alan."

"Bye, John."

John sets out at a paced jog up the east trail. A minute later Scott follows him onto the patio, but takes the trail at the pool's two o'clock, same path but counter clockwise.

A minute later a voice calls down the stairwell. "Hey, they gone?"

When Alan doesn't answer, Gordon comes downstairs anyway, ready for the pool. "Phew. You could smear the tension in here on toast, amirite?"

Alan doesn't respond, he goes back to picking chunks of shell out of his eggs. When he looks up again Gordon is still watching him with a funny expression on his face, but he quickly turns his eyes away when Alan notices, pretends that he wasn't staring, gives an elaborate yawn.

"I'm hittin' the water. Save some eggs for me, 'kay, Dude? Thanks, man." He says too fast and then quickly hurries out onto the deck, dives smoothly into the pool.

Alan is left confused again, bracing for the blow that never comes. He watches as Gordon cuts through the water, his stroke easy and unhurried.

Alan puts the skillet away, no longer hungry.

A little later in the morning he tries with Scott again.

When Scott returns from his run an hour later, Alan's in the den, watching news footage from Bucharest on the big holomonitor.

He plays it off casually, as if it were just something that happened to be on. As if he hadn't timed it to coincide with the end of Scott's run. As if he hadn't restarted the footage when Scott took longer than expected.

In his head he's had this all planned out for weeks. How Scott will come into the room and sit there… or maybe there, up against the edge of Dad's desk. How he will watch the footage for a while and then talk about flight pathways and the sick manoeuvres the pilot pulled to get him through the air trenches. And Alan will listen carefully and then impress him with some insightful comment he throws into the conversation, and they will talk shop for a while, like equals and professionals and then Alan will casually slip into the conversation how he coded a Bucharest scenario for the flight simulator and maybe Scott would like to try it out sometime?

And Scott will be reluctant at first, but will try it and then he will be so impressed that he will have to call over John and Dad and even stupid Gordon to marvel at Alan's coding skills, but that will be nothing compared to when Alan gets in the simulator and shows them all his flying. Then even Dad will have to relent on his rule about Alan using the flight simulator, because Alan will have proven once and for all that he doesn't think of the sim as a toy.

And then there's something, something important, that he wants to ask Scott and John.

But when Scott comes into the room he doesn't say anything except "Hi, Al." He stands with his hand on the stair rail and watches the holo-footage, his mouth a thin line.

"Pretty cool, huh?" Alan says after a long pause and then tries one of his pre-prepared insightful comments anyway. "He must be manually controlling his aileron to be able to perform that spin turn," he says confidently, and then, when Scott says nothing adds, "Right?"

"Yeah, maybe," says Scott.

Alan's heart drops faster than the little cargo plane on screen drops to avoid its pursuers. It's not just that the sim is some of his best work. It's not just that he wants to prove to Scott that he can be a pilot just like him, and a computer whiz just like John. Alan's been fascinated by Bucharest since it first happened and he wants to know that Scott feels the same.

Alan had studied the Iron Sky situation in World Politics with Mr Tuin and in Ethics with Ms Simms. He had written an essay for history about how Russia's blockade of the Eastern European bloc had related to The Cold War of a hundred years ago and the Great Global Conflict. Dad had even made him watch the footage from the negotiations in Paris when he was home on break. But he still didn't understand how President Karkof and his Parliament could get away with keeping the blockade in place after terrorists had detonated a dirty bomb in the Romanian capital.

But that's exactly what the Russians had done. Instead of standing down, they had refused to let either the GDF or any international aid agencies into Bucharest to help. They had doubled down on their defences at the borders, filling the skies with drones and impassable air trenches, and made certain no one could get in or out. Then they had gone right back to negotiating the price of soy beans.

When he had asked Dad why it was happening, Dad had paced around his office like a tiger and said, "Ask Edmund Burke," Like that was some sort of answer.

For nine days the GDF and the international media had piled up at the edge of the Russian ring fence, like an audience at the edge of a circus ring, as viral feeds beamed from inside Romania showed people dying for want of clean water. No one seemed to be able to do anything.

Until a single aircraft, alone, unmarked and definitely unauthorised had run the barricades and managed to break through, avoided being cut down by the drones and disappeared into Romanian airspace. It had been some of the most amazing flying Alan had ever seen. What's more, 24 hours later the news had leaked out that the pilot had delivered an industrial water purification system to the heart of the capital, and that the system had been enough to provide clean water to nearly everyone in the city for the twenty-one days until the siege ended.

The mystery pilot was the biggest hero to Alan's class since Captain Lee Taylor had come to pay them a personal visit. Everyone wanted to know who he was. Alan had been the mystery pilot's biggest, most feverish fan. He had studied the footage intensely, until he knew the patterns of every bank and roll. After two days of sleepless studying he had announced – and when he thinks about it now he feels a hot, awful spike of embarrassment – had announced confidently to the class that the pilot had definitely been his brother. When Tony Wan had called him a liar, he and Alan had nearly got into a bust up about it.

Except when he finally got to talk to Scott, Scott said no, it hadn't been him, that he had no idea who the pilot was, and had got all grumpy and sarcastic and had said that unless he had an identical twin he didn't know about then his whole unit had observed him there on manoeuvres the day of the Bucharest flight and that people needed to stop bugging him about this.  
Three months later someone had named the pilot as Deacon Dell, a former airman who had been decorated in the Battle of Marrakesh in 2041 but had spent the rest of his life in and out of mental institutions with PTSD. Then the news came that he had been shot down two days after his amazing flight, while trying to leave Bucharest.

For two days Alan had been so sick with humiliation that he had wanted to curl up in a tight ball under his bed and not come out. Even his best friends had teased him about it. Tony Wan had been twice as insufferable as usual

"Hey Tracy, we don't know Captain Scarlet's real identity, is he your brother too?" or "Hey Tracy, no one's taking credit for eating the last bag of corn chips, maybe that was your brother."

The thing was, even knowing what he does, Dell's flight is still some of the best flying Alan's ever seen. And even knowing what he does, Alan can't help think that Dell flies just like Scott.

"He's amazing," says Alan, hoping against hope.

"Yeah," Scott says "Amazingly stupid. You shouldn't watch that stuff. It'll rot your brain."

"Why not?" But Scott just goes down into the kitchen without another word.  
Alan lets the film run for a little longer, and is suddenly aware that someone else is in the room. He looks up. Virgil's standing right behind him, his arms crossed.

"Heya, Virg."

Virgil looks down, blinks twice. They haven't seen each other in a while. He looks tall, almost as tall as Dad and John. The colour seems to have drained right out of his face.

"Alan?" Scott calls from the kitchen.

"Turn that off," Virgil barks.

"What? No."

"Goddamit, Alan." Virgil leaps off the higher level, over Alan's head and down into the well of the sitting room. There is a resounding crash. Virgil grabs the remote, and by association, Alan's fingers, crushes them against the black plastic as he wrenches it away. He shuts the holoscreen down, panting, like he's just defused a bomb.

Getting yelled at by Virgil is like getting bitten by a waggedy Labrador retriever. It hurts more because it's so unexpected. He cradles his hand against his chest. "Jeez, Virg."

Their three other brothers arrive up the stairs at a run. "What the hell was that?" Scott wants to know.

"Nothing," snaps Virgil. "I dropped something."

All of them, including Virgil, look around for something that might explain the noise.

"Was it the piano?" hazards Gordon.

Virgil chucks the broken remote on the couch. "I've got a headache. I'll be in my room. Welcome home, Alan. Sorry."

He makes for the stairs. Alan can hear Gordon's voice as he follows him upstairs. "What the hell was that? Why are you picking on the twerp?"  
Virgil's reply is too soft to make out, but a second later Gordon stomps back down the stairs, looking like he's been punched. Scott and John share a look, then both seem to remember like this is something they are not to do, because they each look away.

Alan brushes past them, runs upstairs to his room. Someone calls his name, Gordon he realises to his bewilderment. "Hey, Alan, come on, wait."  
He throws himself onto his bed, feels stupid, stupid, _stupid_ , because the whole stunt with the Bucharest stuff was like something a kid would do, like leaving on your favourite album or TV show where somebody was bound to hear and hoping they'll come up to you and say, "This is amazing. You're so smart for having found this." It's stupid and immature and no wonder Scott saw right through it.

And his brothers. He doesn't know what to do with his brothers. His brother the astronaut and his brother the fighter pilot and his brother the artist and even his brother the stupid asshole. When he was younger it seemed like if the five of them were together they could do anything and now it's like the five of them together can't even be together.

In his head he can hear the engineers again, laughing. What if they were right?

The thought hurts so much that he has to push it out of his head. He snatches up his game-mitt and his headphones and plays through nine levels of _Sasuke_ on ninja master mode.

There's a heavy knock on the door.

"Yeah?" says Alan.

The door slides open and Gordon's standing out there, swinging off the door frame, swaying gently on the balls of his feet. His hair is still wet. "Yo," he says.

"What do you want?" Alan glares at him.

"Wha'? Me? Nothing," says Gordon and pulls the door closed again.

A second later there comes another knock.

"What?"

The door slides open again. Gordon puts his finger in his ear, scratches, drops off his toes. "You wanna come for a hike or something?"

Alan hits pause on the game. In three years Gordon hasn't done one thing to be nice to him, hasn't invited him anywhere or to do anything without an ulterior motive. Gordon isn't like Scott or John or Virgil. Gordon can't be trusted.

"Okay."

He's on high alert for the first twenty minutes, his heart rate hitting ninety, waiting for the rain of water balloons filled with mustard to fall or to step on a dog poop landmine. Maybe Gordon's learned a new alligator snare in Tallahassee and wants to try it out on him, or wants to take him to the highest point on the island and strand him there.

Or maybe he just wants to be out of Dad and Grandma's earshot before he turns on Alan and screams at him, like he did two summers ago, that Alan is a pathetic know-it-all little worm and that Mom would still be here if it weren't for him.

But nothing happens. They don't even go for a proper hike. They get as far as the southern beach and Gordon plonks himself down on the sand and doesn't move. He just sits there for twenty minutes, digging his bare toes into the sand and watching the horizon.

The storm's blown itself out but the wind's still up, teasing the palm fronds and working the waves into a frenzy. Nice surf weather, except the island never gets good breakers.

Alan sits next to Gordon, afraid to move or to talk in case it might set him off. But presently a doctor fly lands on his big toe and he can't help but scratch.  
Gordon looks at him as if realising he's there for the first time. And under his tan Alan can see he's flushed. Alan braces himself.

"Alan?"

"Yeah?"

"Sorry, man."

Suddenly, it's like Alan's swallowed his gum, because there's a big sticky lump in his throat that makes it hard to talk or even swallow. It's lucky the lump is there because otherwise he thinks that everything might come pouring out of him. School and Ms Olin's gift and the pile of unpacked boxes stacked in his room and even the whole Elysium II sim and the things he heard those engineers say.

Instead, talking carefully around the lump, he says, "You're dumb."

Gordon chortles and gives him a dead arm, but in an amiable way. "Don't ever change, Al."

And Alan grins and is very careful not to wince because, _ow_ , a right hook from Gordon hurts. And the gum lump doesn't ease up, but the other one, the one that's been gnawing at his guts for a long time, loosens a little.

It has never occurred to him before that maybe his brother isn't gone for good. Maybe beneath this sullen, sneering, dismissive guy, the one who rolls his eyes whenever Alan talks and calls him, "the kid", Gordon still lurks. Maybe, if he digs a little deeper he's still there, the guy who would build pillow forts with him, and lie with him under starry skies giving names like The Drunk Triangle and The Spilled Popcorn to constellations Alan already knew as the Hydrus and the Small Megallanic Cloud, and come into his room on cloudy nights absolutely because he wanted to check Alan was okay and definitely not because he was nervous of the thunder.

He misses that guy, the guy who knew all the best pranks and would team up with him to try them out on their older brothers.

Of course, mostly they tried them out on John. Alan had never once been brave enough to prank Scott, never had the courage to do more than hold the dye balls or the ladder for Gordon. Afterwards he would go lie on his belly in the loft, listening for the sounds of Scott screaming blue murder and using words Grandma definitely didn't know that he knew and Gordon crowing before coming to join Alan to lie quietly in his hiding place until the danger had passed.

You could prank Virgil too, but he would just take hair dyed blue or a butt full of termite bites with a placid shrug and then weeks later, when you had forgotten there was any danger, you would find all your shoes superglued to the floor.

Sometimes, as they lay in the darkness of the loft, they would discuss the ultimate prank, the one that did the impossible and finally got Dad, but even Gordon at the height of his powers had never caught their father out.  
Alan sneaks a look at Gordon, but Gordon's got his gaze fixed on the horizon and it occurs to Alan that maybe this Gordon, isn't that much different than the Gordon who used to lurk in his doorway after midnight and ask Alan if maybe he wanted some company until the hurricane blew itself out.

"Hey," he tries, "Wanna go stick all of Scott's furniture to the ceiling?"

One of Alan's earliest memories is sneaking downstairs and seeing Dad light a piece of precious paper on fire. He remembers watching with fascination as the flame caught and spread, and the corners of the burning sheet curled upwards. The change in Gordon's expression is just like that. He grins.

"Nah," he says, "Scott's lurking around too much. We'd never have time to get more than minor furnishings up there. It's no good if you can't do the bed too. But I do like your moxy." He gives Alan another tap on the shoulder, which would hurt like hell if Alan's arm wasn't still numb from the first thump.

"Let's retire to the kitchen and refine our thinking."

They race each other back and Gordon still beats Alan, but only by a few seconds and then they make themselves a massive lunch of mango and blueberry pancakes and chocolate milk. Gordon demolishes three stacks by himself. He shrugs it off when Alan asks him if he wants poached chicken instead, because, you know, Olympics, and reaches for another cinnamon muffin. "These are better for my soul."

Then they retire to Alan's room and plot and scheme and play an epic seven hour session of _Girl Guides Versus Aliens_ and only come out to raid the kitchen for ice-cream and nachos and then play another marathon session of _Cobra Ops: Special Missions_ and Gordon even lets Alan have the sniper rifle. They challenge a famous Singapore syndicate to a duelplay and when Alan takes out the infamous ganker Spir079, with a killer headshot Gordon actually fistbumps him.

And between co-ordinating their strikes Alan tells Gordon about school and Gordon tells him all about Tallahassee and has Alan snorting chocolate milk through his nose with his impressions of Coach and their Ukrainian physio.  
And later still, when they've laid waste to the competition and discarded their controllers, Gordon's impressions turn into ones of Scott and John and even Dad and they talk until the sun is starting to peak through the window.

Gordon's head drops onto the beanbag and he gives a drowsy stretch. "I'm beat. I'm gonna sleep like a baby, you know?"

"Hey, Gordy?"

"Yeah, man?" Gordon doesn't raise his head, doesn't even open his eyes.

"Do you think there's something wrong with us?" It's like someone has turned the sound down on his voice on him, because it comes out only a little above a whisper. And if he expects any response at all it's for Gordon to roll over and murmur, "Well, there's nothing wrong with me, anyway."

But Gordon's eyes snap open and a second later he's up and crawling across the floor and jabbing his finger in Alan's face. "Who told you there was something wrong with you? Was it someone at school?"

"Not at school, no."

He hears the engineers' laughter ringing in his ears. _"Poor kids. What do you think the odds are even one of them survives to adulthood without turning out loopy as a corkscrew?"_

But he doesn't say this to Gordon, because Gordon's already vibrating like a plucked guitar string.

"I'll kill them!" Gordon's cracking every knuckle. "Is this why Dad–?"

"Is it why Dad what?"

"Never mind." Gordon jabs his finger in Alan's face again. "Don't let anyone ever tell you there's anything wrong with you, Alan. There's nothing wrong with you. You're great. You're perfect, even. _Urgh!_ "

For a moment Alan thinks that he's never seen Gordon like this, but that's not true, is it? He's seen it one time, when Mr Hawkins had said those things about Virgil being the apple that falls far from the tree and Gordon had overheard and hadn't seemed to care that Mr Hawkins was a teacher and Gordon was 13. In the end Alan, Gordon and Virgil, who wasn't even in the junior school anymore, had been hauled to the office and Dad had had to be called and there had been long, stern lectures and after it was all done Dad had bought Gordon an enormous ice cream sundae.

A hiccup of laughter escapes Alan, and then another. It stops Gordon in his tracks. "What?"

"You're just so like Scott, when you act like that."

Gordon staggers, mimes being shot, sags back onto the beanbag. "Argh! Critical hit. How could you, Al? I thought we were friends."

"Are we?" asks Alan in his turned down voice.

"Are we what?"

"Friends?"

Gordon murmurs and stutters and finally grabs a pillow and flings it at Alan's head. "Go to sleep, Al." He slips back into the beanbag.

Alan's head slips back onto the pillow. The square of the window is lightening and there's a warmth in his chest. He wants to ask Gordon one more thing but maybe he'll just close his eyes first…

Alan sleeps.

The next morning he wakes late.

When he does all four of his brothers are gone.


	4. Gordon - He Wishes for the Starry Cloths

( **Author's Note:** Look sometimes you just do stuff, okay? Sometimes you see a big red line and a sign saying 'do not cross' and you think, 'hey, over there looks neato!' So Gods of the semi-canon, if you will, please forgive me.

 **Chapter 4**

 **Gordon – He Wishes for The Starry Cloths of Heaven**

 ** _In which Florida State Liquor Laws are violated - Alan Tracy composes long letters to each of his brothers and subsequently deletes each of them – Scott Tracy sets a course for Algiers - John Tracy receives an unexpected call – Virgil Tracy makes a mistake and the deaths of many, many Martians prompts personal revelation._**

The bartender places a beer in front of Gordon, which just goes to show that – _hah_! – in poor light – and with his roommate's ID and a twenty slid across the bar – he can absolutely pass for 21.

He takes a swig, marshals his face into the burnt out _whatever_ of the habitual drinker and doesn't even gag a little. _Alright!_

But the beer doesn't help, any more than the ten K run or the double training session that had coach gnashing her teeth. He's been feeling sick all week, ever since Dad's presentation…. Demonstration? Advertisement? Whatever. Or, not sick, weird. Unwell. Discombobulated. Oh. Good word.

He can't stop thinking about Dad's year. One year to operational, he had said. One year. In one year Gordon hopes to shave two point two seconds off his best times. It doesn't sound like much, but in the 100 metres butterfly it's the difference between nowhere and a gold medal.

Two point two seconds.

One year.

Gold medal.

He could do it too. Maybe. Ivanovich is slowing, he doesn't have another gold in him. Ling, well Ling will be the one to beat. The Worlds next year will show if Gordon has enough in the tank to beat the little Canadian.

And then there's Bobby.

Coach is always underestimating Bobby, but Gordon has seen him post consistently better times since they got to Tallahassee. Not much, a microsecond here or there, but enough to be considered a trend towards statistical significance.

Bobby's got all the things that help you win medals in sports' movies. If those things were enough at this level, Bobby's love for the sport, his passion and drive, would carry him over the line every time. They talk about it sometimes, on their dawn runs. Gordon knows the lines, giving a hundred and ten per cent, total commitment, giving it all to your sport. He can even say them with a straight face, but Bobby really takes them seriously.

 _Gordon's never taken a thing seriously in his life._

It's always Scotty's voice he hears saying those words, even though it was John who said it, his jeans rolled up and his legs dangling in the pool, completely unaware Gordon was crouched in the bushes six feet away with a sniper mount and a water pistol full of molasses.

Alan, standing by with a wind machine and a bag of feathers, had checked in on his walkie-talkie to ask if they were set and he had told Alan… He had told Alan… He doesn't care to dwell on what he had told Alan.

There had been hell to pay after that. He couldn't have made more feathers fly, or caused a bigger mess with a barrel of molasses and a hundred wind machines.

After it all blew over he had told Dad he wanted to take the scout up on his offer after all.

 _It's better to be lucky than be good._

He always hears that in John Wayne's voice. _It's better to be lucky than be good, pardner. Blam. Blam._ Even though it was Lefty Gomez, by way of Napoleon who said it first.

Gordon's been incredibly lucky. Born lucky. Born with a body that cuts through the water and knows instinctively how to move. Born with natural speed, natural stamina. Born with a brain and to a father who, despite his own Bond villain proclivities, taught him how to use it. Born with the Tracy jaw line. Not born, thank the great carrot God Gingervitus, a redhead. Born rich. Hot damn they are so rich. They are so rich that when he wants to taunt his rivals about it he has to use colourful metaphors to explain, because the numbers themselves are so huge they pass through people's brains without firing anything like understanding.

 _I'm so rich if I fell out of a bed built out of all my money it would take me 23 minutes to hit the floor. I'm so rich that if you laid all my money out in a path I could walk to the moon and back._

And his rivals look at him and their lips curl in disdain or disgust, because he's just proven, hasn't he, that he's the entitled little douchebro everyone knows that he is. And hey, you've got to give the people what they want, right?

Gordon knows how to give the people what they want.

It is luck that's got him this far. His lucky genes. His luck that Coach Patricia spotted him when he was seven years old, splashing around with Virgil at the local pool, and pushed him to train as he did. His luck to have a brother like John.

 _Gordon's never taken a thing seriously in his life._

 _Dammit._

The bar is a quiet, dank hang-out in a strip mall behind a Bestbuy in downtown Tallahassee. The AC is cranked up to full. There are stale peanuts on the counter and a pool table in the corner. College kids don't come down here. His team mates definitely don't. Every now and then a patron shoves open the door, letting in a blast of warm, damp, Florida air and the mid-afternoon sun. What is he doing here?

And where does John get off, anyway? It's not as if he doesn't work. He moved here, didn't he? To this armpit of a city. He gets up at five to go training. He sticks to his prescribed caloric intake. He knows the grind inside out, does it, excels at it, likes it even. He's a good boy. And you know what, he gets results. He's a national gold medallist. So what if he goofs around sometimes? The crowd just lap that stuff up. So what if he doesn't spend every moment of the day thinking about swimming? Is he supposed to force it?

Because he's seen what happens when you try to take a God given talent and force it to be your passion. He's had a front row seat of that, yes he has, thanks to big bro. Virgil can read every book on art history that there is, grow facial hair down to his knees, smoke cheroots and not bathe for weeks, be everything a kid from a family of pilots thinks a 'true artist' should be and it won't make him any less that guy who likes planes and tinkering and spending hours sketching the fletching of a sparrow's wing.

Like, seriously, what is he doing here? There are a hundred bars closer to campus. There are a thousand ways he can get a beer if he wants. There are a million better places to be right now. So get up, Gordon, get up and go home. Come on, get up.

 _Gordon's never taken a thing seriously in his life._

 _Grgh!_

So John doesn't understand. John's always failed to understand. John is functionally incapable of understanding. Because whatever else he's had,

John's always had dreams.

Gordon has always envied John his dreams, always figured he'd get some too, that in time they would turn up, like acne, with puberty.

 _Here you are, Sir. A razor, a libido and Your Dreams. Shall Sir be wanting a growth spurt with that?_

But he's been waiting and the dreams never turned up. Or rather, they were sent to the wrong address. Because now Alan's got dreams. And yeah they look a lot like John's dreams, except faster, or maybe like Scott's dreams, except higher. Or maybe they just look a lot like those pictures of Dad waving on the gantry in Kazakhstan, or the footage of him taking his first bounding steps on the moon. But it doesn't matter that they look familiar, they are still Alan's dreams.

Gordon kinda hates him for it.

 _Alan_.

Of all the crap he's pulled in the last two years the stuff with Alan is the worst.

It makes him sick to think about it. Not the same kind of sick that gets him when he tries not to think about Dad's grand ambition and his little submarine , this is a much worse kind of sick. Like kick to the stomach sick.

 _Alan thinks there's something wrong with him._

"Is there something wrong with us?" He'd said it in a whisper, when Gordon was in half a doze, like maybe he hoped Gordon wouldn't hear it. Like Gordon could ever fail to hear that.

Alan thinks they're not friends. Alan thinks Gordon doesn't love him. Alan thinks there's something wrong with him.

Does Alan think all those things because of Gordon?  
Grandma says it'll be okay, that Alan has a forgiving nature, but Gordon is not so sure.

"I don't want him to forgive me. I want him to forget. I want to have never have said it." That thing, that terrible thing that he said, the thing that he can't take back.

She'd sighed then. "I know, kiddo. But I'm afraid it doesn't work that way. But you know, they're your brothers. Knowing the best of each other and seeing the worst, that's a privilege you all share."

"I hate myself, Grandma."

"Silly boy. No, you don't." She'd come into the room, sat on his futon, squeezed his hand in both of hers. "You just hate a thing that you did. But it's in the past, and you are so much more then that one thing. It'll be okay, I promise."

But Gordon's not so sure. How can it be okay? How can he ever make this right?

 _"It's your fault she's –"_

Stop. Stop. Just don't – Don't think about it.

He wishes Alan had told on him, had run to Scott or John. He wishes that big brother had come around and smashed his jaw for him. At least then it would be something like justice. Instead Alan just looks at him with an expression that is half-fear and half-hope and it kills Gordon, every time.

 _"How does it feel to be the bad guy?"_

Virgil, of course, had cut straight to the heart of the matter.

He'd turned up, unexpected and uninvited, flicking stones at Gordon's window, at five AM on Christmas Day. Chicago, he'd said, with its snow drifts, inflatable Santas and foot long icicles, just didn't feel right. Christmas wasn't Christmas without at least one tropical thunderstorm.

"He's my lover," Gordon told the irritated diver, who'd stuck her head out the window to learn the source of the commotion. "It's very new and secret."

"I'm his lover," Virgil nodded, as Gordon swung himself down the drainpipe. "But I'm dumping him tonight. Merry Christmas."

They'd driven ninety miles to the beach on St. George's Island. You couldn't watch the sun rise over the Gulf of Mexico and swimming in it was like swimming in soup. But they'd lain out on a blanket on the roof of the car, and while Virgil dozed, Gordon had watched the sky change. If you squinted it felt like home.

Later they'd eaten breakfast at a Caribbean beach shack and Virgil had been halfway through burning the roof of his mouth on a molten cheesy fritter before he'd remembered about the whole, 'I'm a vegan now', thing. And he'd been funny and relaxed and unguarded in a way Gordon hadn't seen in a long time. He'd told a lot of stories about art school, at least one of which he had lifted wholesale from a movie and Gordon had pretended not to notice.

And it had felt like Christmas.

Later still, they'd scaled the chainlink around one of the old resorts, abandoned after the monster Tsunami of 2041, to go exploring. They'd found tide marks on every wall, dusty swimming pools shaped like angels, palm trees and snowmen. They'd explored an enormous honeymoon suite with cigarette butts in the filter of the Jacuzzi bath and satin sheets still on the bed, sexy scarlet turned septic salmon with age. Then they'd stumbled across a mini golf course and somehow, Virgil had got the motor going on the windmill and they'd been able to play an epic round of mini-golf. Gordon had played with a length of copper piping, Virgil with a discarded sweeping brush, and then on the back nine they'd switched, but Virgil still beat him three up with two to play.

They'd climbed to the roof of the resort, high as they could go, to watch the sunset, then laughed themselves silly when they realised simultaneously that it was only three pm.

Virgil had a stick of charcoal in his pocket, wrapped up inside a twist of paper. Using the concrete buttresses as his canvas he'd begun to sketch in broad strokes. After a while Gordon had begun to pick out the shapes. A line of trees, a pocket square of beach, a glimmer of ocean. He'd sat with his arms behind his head and chattered about everything and nothing.

And…

"How does it feel to be the bad guy?" Virgil asked, without turning away from the wall, in response to some glib comment Gordon had made about teasing Menzen. He'd backpedalled immediately, "I didn't mean-"

Gordon had stretched, working out the kinks of his spine like it was no big deal. "Dude, chill. It's okay. Tech giant buys son gold medal, nobody enthusiastic, goes the plot of no sports movie, ever. I get it."

It's Bobby he feels sorry for. Bobby the believer, Bobby who was born in a refugee camp, who grew up in the slums and only got out of there by shear drive and talent. Bobby who is half black, half Korean and gay to boot, and who is constantly elbowed out of the way because his times are point four of a second slower than some smarmy rich kid five years younger than he is.

It's Alan he feels sorry for.

"Dad doesn't swim your races for you," Virgil had gone back to sketching.  
"I know."

"And he can't pay someone to attend five AM training sessions for you, either."

"Just pay an angry Kentuckian to prod me out of bed."

"Anyway," Virgil half turned and his grin was genuine, "I just meant you're so super super blond. Everyone knows blond guys are evil."

"We are. We are soo evil."

"There, finished." From memory Virgil had drawn the view from the den at home. The pool, the jungle, the morning light on the ocean. "Merry Christmas." He signed it off with a doodle of a Christmas tree.

"Not quite finished." Gordon had snatched the stick of charcoal up, spun it in his fingers and used it to deface the sketch with a number of stick figures.

"There's Dad, Kayo, Kyrano, Scott and Allie."

"Where's John?"

"Reality check. John's in his room. Are you really going to drag him out of there just for a family portrait? I don't think so. And wait," He turns the charcoal on his side, drags it across the painting, so it looks like a plume of black smoke.

"Grandma burning dinner," said Virgil. "Now it feels like Christmas." Then his stomach had growled.

They'd had Christmas Dinner at a small diner off Route 49. All you can eat ham and turkey for fifteen bucks a head. The regulars had welcomed them in, pulled crackers with them, made them wear funny hats. And the waitress, Sally, had thought him cute enough that she'd given them both enormous free helpings of pecan pie for desert.

And then somewhere on the highway between St. George and the city, just as Virgil's wished for thunderstorm had arrived, they'd got into a fight. He'd say it was a stupid fight, if he could remember what it was about. But he knows it was ugly and meaningless and bad. He'd leapt out of the car, thrown Virgil's Christmas gift, still wrapped, back in his face.

And he'd never got to say how much it meant to him that Virgil had turned up when he did. He'd never said, "Hey, this is the best Christmas I could have hoped for."

It was Virgil who had flown him off the island too, a rare privilege. Virgil doesn't fly much anymore, at least not where his family can see him. Virgil's got a Scott voice in his head much, much louder than Gordon. Poor Scotty, he was so busy in his self-righteous quest to stop Dad moulding Virg against his will that he ended up failing to notice that Virgil was quietly moulding himself into what he thought Scott wanted him to be.

"Pretty crazy, huh?" he'd said, once they were airborne. "I mean most dads, when they call a family conference like that it's to announce that they're marrying a trophy wife. I was all geared up for him to introduce us to his supermodel child-bride."

"Pretty crazy, huh?" he repeats, like a broken toy, when Virgil does nothing but grunt and keep his eyes fixed on the horizon.

"Scott says we're not doing it," Virgil's tone is flat.

 _Scott says…_

It's not a competition. If it were Gordon would have lost already. Gordon is Virgil's best friend until Scott walks into a room.

Gordon hates to lose. Except as much as he tries, he can't begrudge this one to Scott. Scott who's brave and smart and funny and can shred the speed of sound like it is tissue paper. Scott isn't everything Gordon wants to be. But he is everything Gordon's afraid he is not. When Scott speaks, people listen, they weigh up his opinion, take him seriously. When Gordon speaks, maybe he can make someone crack a smile.

And Scott says no.

So Virgil says, "okay, Scott" as if what he thinks doesn't matter.

But what Virgil thinks matters a lot to Gordon.

And what he thinks seems to be a complicated, churning thing. Gordon can sort of sense the edges of what Virgil thinks, but can't quite get a hold of the centre, and when he asks Virgil, Virgil just shrugs, puts in some course corrections and says, "Doesn't matter what I think. It wasn't meant for me. I'm an artist not a pilot."

And Gordon has to wonder if they surgically removed Virgil's irony bone in Chicago, or maybe the Scott voice in his head is just so loud he can't hear himself speak anymore.

Gordon knows exactly how he feels about it.

He feels sick.

He can't even think about it too much, has to let his thoughts slide off it because if he thinks about it, then there's that awful, queasy wrench in the pit of his stomach.

Two point two seconds.

One year.

Gold medal.

Yup, there it is again. Don't think about it. Don't think about Dad, or his plans or his crazy dreams. Don't think about what it would mean, or what you'd have to sacrifice, or what your brothers would have to sacrifice.

 _I miss my brothers._

Poo.

Oh man.

One beer!

Is this what beer does to you? Wasn't it supposed to make you buzzed, or comfortably numb, not gloopy and maudlin? This bites.

That's growing up, isn't it? You can't be best friends forever. You can't spend your life building tree houses and star-gazing and having competitions to see who could hold his breath longest (Gordon), who could solve a Rubik's Cube fastest (dammit, Alan), who could eat the most of Grandma's cookies without gagging (Kayo was undisputed champion there.)

You move on, you find new people and new things to care about. You don't go back. No matter what Dad wants.

But he still misses them.

Scott, who wants to change the world and has the strength to do it. John, who has dreams enough to fill the whole sky. Virgil, who will go to any lengths to hide all the ways he is exceptional. Alan, who doesn't know how special he is.

And Gordon, who can swim a bit.

"Man, this piece of junk is rigged!" The shout across the bar is a much needed distraction from his torpor. He turns.

There's a _Martian Invaders_ console in the corner beside the pool table and a bunch of rednecks are feeding it their quarters. Twenty-five years ago it was cool and retro to have an imitation twentieth century console in your bar. Now it's just tacky again. Martian acid goops the screen and its Game Over, that'll be a dollar, thanks very much.

"Hey Luke, I said your stupid game is fixed."

"You may be right," says Luke, the bartender and does not look away from the hockey game.

"Hey, can I try?"

The men aren't happy about some punk butting in on their losing streak, but they're also out of quarters. They allow Gordon to elbow in.

He feeds the machine its meal and picks up the blue plastic pistol, feels the weight of it, levels it at the screen.

Dad hates guns. Can't stand them. Can't abide them in the house. But that's not the same as being a bad shot.

Two minutes later Martians are bleeding bytes all over the screen and Gordon's sticking the gun back in its holster with a gunslinger's flourish. The rednecks are clapping him on the back."Hey, not bad at all, kid."

He types GCT into the high scores, wonders if maybe his new friends will buy him another round. "Yeah, thanks. You should see me on _Plants vs Accountants."_

"Are you really into video games, or something?" The guy runs his hands through the bristles on his head, sticks his cap back on.

"Nah. Just got a knack for them, I guess."

Gordon's got a knack for lots of stuff. He's good at lots of stuff. It's better to be lucky than to be good and he's been lucky enough to be born good. Good enough to win an Olympic gold medal in the 100 metres butterfly.

An Olympic gold is a hell of a dream. It's Bobby's dream. It's coach's dream. It's the dream of a thousand athletes less good, less lucky than he is.

Isn't that enough?

"What if you don't make it up there?" He'd asked John that one summer night, lying out on the beach and watching the meteor showers. Virgil had gone to fetch more blankets and Alan lay asleep between them.

"I'll make it," John had said, with the serenity of a true believer.

"But what if you don't? Only point five per cent of all applicants are accepted to the astronaut training programme. And currently only six percent of them will get to fly." He'd known all the numbers, because he was being a little shit and numbers are the best way to hurt John.

But John wasn't shaken in the slightest. "It'll be hard. But I'll make it. You'll understand when you're older, Gordy. Sometimes you just know. You just feel it. In your gut."

But now Gordon's older and he still doesn't understand. He likes swimming. He likes to win. He likes the idea of being an Olympian, but he doesn't need it. He's never felt that longing in his gut.  
I've never felt that longing in my gut.

Oh.

 _Oh._

Oh right.

He wants this.

He's not sick. He's not afraid. He doesn't have echinococcus.

He just wants this so bad it hurts.

 _Well, damn._

 _Your dreams, Sir. Shall Sir be wanting anything else?_

"Yeah! Yeah, a lot more." He covers his mouth with his hand, because, whoops, he's nearly shouting and the bar's doughy, mid-afternoon patrons are turning their heads ponderously to stare at him. "Sorry."

Because maybe dreams don't have to be gold and glory and what everybody else wants? Maybe your dreams are better when they're off kilter? Dreams of cool, damp darkness and people in need and a voice at the end of the line you know has always got your back. A job that is challenging and rewarding and fun and hard.

His first instinct is to call Virgil. To shout down the comm at him that this is it. That this has always been it. And hey, didn't you know? Why didn't you tell me that this is what I was meant to do?  
But second thoughts catch up to first ones.

He puts in a different call instead.

It seems to take forever to connect. By the time it does his heart is lurching in his chest and he's drumming his fingers on the side of Martian Invaders like he's Alan after a triple shot of espresso.

"What do you want, Gordon?" John's out for a run. Gordon can see the ghost of the tundra wastes in his holo port.

"I'm in."

John wipes the sweat sheen from his brow before he says, "Huh?"

"I said, I'm in."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh come off it, John. Are. You. In?"

John tilts his head, just a little, to the side. His eyes are puzzled, like he doesn't quite know what to make of all this. Then he nods. "Yes. I'm in."

And you know, there's that smile again, spreading across Gordon's face like the tide coming in. He can't help it. He can't fight it. It's awesome.

"Johnny! Man! Johnny! We could do this, couldn't we? I think we could do this."

"Yeah, yeah, I think we could." And the coolest thing is that John's smiling too. It's cautious and guarded but it keeps widening, like maybe he can't quite control it either.

A hiccup of laughter escapes Gordon, then another.

"What?"

"Just thinking. Scott is going to be furious."

John's returning snort of laughter is kind of magic.

Then behind him a regular shouts to Luke that, what, is he running a crèche now? John blinks. "Gordon, are you in a bar?"

"Never mind that." Because, okay, everybody's staring at him now, and maybe it's time to take this somewhere more private. "How are your hacking skills these days?"

"Terrible," John says without missing a beat. "Why?"

"Because I need you to make me twenty-one."

* * *

Less than twelve hours later, he stands in front of Coach's desk, letting her tirade roll over him. She is going ballistic, ranting about cowardice, about laziness, stupidity. Promising him a million regrets. Swearing she won't take him back if he begs her.

He nods as if he is listening. The gold medal hangs between them, but for Gordon at least, probably for coach too, it's getting further and further away.

Never mind, it was always somebody else's dream.

"I'm sorry, he says. I've made up my mind. I leave this evening." A thought occurs to him. "You should bring in Sitterson, he posted good times at nationals last year. If you call him now you might get him before he leaves for WASP."

* * *

Twenty-four hours after that, Trainee-Service Man Cooper Waverly, apparently a last minute replacement for Sitterson, who's gone off to be a synchronised swimmer or something, is the last of the new recruits to arrive on the tarmac at Marineville Base.

Lieutenant Tempest, who's been assigned by the Old Man to check in the recruits – and to weed out any Aquaphibian spies - takes his creds and runs them through the scanner

Troy gives the recruit the once over, assesses him – and surreptitiously inspects him for gills – and decides at once that he's not going to like this new serviceman. The kid can't keep a grin off his face.

"There's no smiling in WASP," says Troy, handing back the creds.

"Yes, Sir." The grin does not even flicker.

"You sure you're in the right place, kid?"

"Yes, Sir. Absolutely," says Waverly. "Best Aquanaut training in the world. I'm right where I want to be."


	5. Virgil - The Man in the Grey Coat

**AN:** Hey everyone who has got this far. Thanks for your continued interest. This is almost to the end of part one, and it's cool to see what a small but mighty fandom this is, with fans across the world, from Malaysia to Canada, New Zealand to the Netherlands. If you've enjoyed what I have written so far I'm very glad. If not, well why are you still punishing yourself? If you're here hoping for shirtless Virgil, disclaimer, he does not take his top off in this chapter.

And yes, yes, I know, I took away the gold medal. Sorry about that.

Questions of a postcard please, or thoughts, comments or gurgles of rage. I've got a writer's finicky ego.

Regards

\- Swallow

 **Chapter 5**

 **Virgil – The Man in the Grey Coat**

 ** _In which shots are fired – Serviceman Cooper Waverly learns more than he ever expected to about Mermaids – John Tracy gets re-acquainted with zero G training – Alan Tracy waits for his father's return – Scott's head hits the bar._**

 _"What if Virgil wants to be an artist?"_

 _"So what if he does?"_

Virgil's been thinking about eggs.

Specifically, rotten eggs. The kind that Gordon would sometimes rig to explode just as you got out of the shower, or drop on your head as you and your date were taking your picture for prom, or would sometimes just substitute in for the ones in the fridge so you could make yourself a sulphur omelette.

A rotten egg, looks smooth and shiny on the outside, but break it open it's a stinking, gloopy mess that gets smeared onto everything.

To put it another way. It's amazing how fast things can go to shit sometimes.

Six days ago he had been on the tarmac in Queensland watching Tracy Two taxi and he had been, not happy exactly, but the good sort of nervous. Looking forward to seeing the guys, glad to spend a couple of days at home.

Now Scott's not answering his calls and Gordon's a hot mess and Alan's moping around the house like he's never going to leave, and Scott and John are having huge, life-altering fights outside his room at three in the morning _like Virgil can't hear every word they say._

And Dad's playing a game to which no one else knows the rules and Virgil can't figure out what part he's supposed to play or even if he's a piece in the game at all.

Also, he's getting shot at, so there's that.

The plaza of Main Street is sixty metres wide. Sixty metres of harsh, grey, scorched earth between the alley and the relative safety of the blown out hotel on the corner and not one thread of cover anywhere in between. Are there shooters waiting for him? He has no idea. Do they have snipers on the roofs? He doesn't know that either. If they see him will they shoot to kill?

He's so out of his depth they would need sonar to find him.

A small, treacherous part of him says, hey, maybe just surrender, make a big noise about being a rich American, about your daddy the big cheese, maybe they'll just kick you around a bit, maybe they'll ransom you home.

But Minka and Ollie are somewhere on the other side of the plaza of death and they are in this mess because of him, and they are absolutely his responsibility and he's got to find them. So no surrender then. And no staying here.

He flexes on the balls of his toes, sucks in a deep breath and runs for it. He keeps low, crouches close to the ground, every instant expecting to be struck by a bullet in the calf, in the kidney, in the occiput. He doesn't think about what Dad will believe when he finds him spread out on a coroner's slab. He doesn't think about how the others will wonder when they hear how and where he died. He just thinks about putting one foot in front of the other and not twisting an ankle on the cracked pavestones.

When the armoured jeep screams around the corner and skids to a stop, broadside, next to him he thinks that he is in trouble.

When the driver's door opens to reveal a dark-eyed, grey clad figure, he knows he is.

"Get in," snarls Kyrano.

That's when the first bullet clips his heel.

He dives into the back seat and the door slams shut behind him, as Kyrano forces the jeep from a standstill into a balletic spin.

Bullets ricochet off the jeep's armoured hide. In the distance he can hear the roar of engines. "Stay down!" Kyrano barks, when Virgil tries to raise his head.

Virgil doesn't ask what Kyrano is doing here. He doesn't ask how he knew. He doesn't get the chance. He just lies there, on his belly, and watches through a very small crack between the seats as Kyrano puts the jeep through manoeuvres that shouldn't be possible for anything built of steel and carbon and not muscle and sinew. Kyrano can make the jeep charge like a rampaging white rhino or prance like a Holsteiner stallion. It's not a question of outrunning their pursuers. Kyrano simply outclasses them.

Wow.

Finally, in the heart of the temple district, he slides the jeep, like a man threading a needle, down an alley any sane person would swear could never accommodate a vehicle of that size, nudges open a pair of red wooden doors with the jeep's grille and crawls into an empty shed.

He jumps out, shuts the doors behind them, slides the bolt in place, then goes round the side of the jeep and drags Virgil out of the back seat. "Get up."

He marches him through a door in the rear of the shed, down two flights of stairs to a cold, empty cellar and forces him down into the single chair.

"Of all the– " He flings his aviators down on the table in front of Virgil. "I'd expect this sort of reckless, pig-headed lunacy if I were dealing with your father! Or Scott. But you, Virgil Tracy, I thought you had the sense God gave a carrot."

When Kyrano is truly angry, the clipped Oxbridge tones of his adopted home give way to the softer burr of his native Malay. Virgil's only ever seen it happen twice before now. The second time was when he was eleven and Gordon had stuck his fingers into the garbage disposal to try and rescue Alan's Symphony Angel action figure. Only John's quick thinking had saved Gordon from being permanently short the tips of three digits. "Do I need to handcuff you?" he growls.

"No. Of course not."

"No? Because if you try to run away, I swear to whatever Gods are listening I will knee-cap you, hog-tie you and pack you home in a shipping crate." Virgil's disbelief must show on his face because he adds in dark tones, "Pick a knee."

"I'm not going to run, Kyrano."

Kyrano gives a disbelieving snort and when he leaves he locks the door behind him anyway. Virgil is left in the semi-darkness.

A spider scurries up the leg of the table and across the back of Virgil's left hand.

He raises his hand to eye level so he can watch it tiptoe across the roots of his fingers. The tendons pulled taut across his knuckles. His hands are shaking.

He'd been sloppy. He'd been sloppy and careless and now he was scared out of his mind. _Pathetic._ How stupid– how stupid could you be?

It wasn't supposed to be like this. _Helping Hands_ was a Mom and Pop medical aid charity. They went where they were needed, bringing supplies to the hungry, the dispossessed, the sick, but they didn't fly into warzones, never into warzones. It was supposed to be a simple vaccine drop to a refugee camp and the Chinese were supposed to be a week away from mobilising.

He should have checked. Technically, Virgil's just the pilot. Technically, geopolitical threat assessment is Ollie's job, it's why _Helping Hands_ employ him and his Ivy League degree in International Studies. Ollie does a reasonable job on threat assessment, as long as he's not chatting up co-eds or coming up with _hilarious_ nicknames like 'Virgin' or 'Vagisil', but Virgil has got into the habit of checking anyway. More than once the only reason they haven't flown into a category three hurricane or a political coup is that their aircraft has 'mysteriously' sprung a leak in a fuel line just as they were scheduled to depart.

Virgil likes to know what he's flying into. He double checks. He always double checks.

Except not this time.

This time he had come back from the South Pacific, to his little rented bedsit and his head had been swarming with Dad's diagrams and Scott's words and Gordon's _well, what are you going to do about it_ looks, and he would have given anything not to have to think for a while.

So when the call had come in to go to Tibet and drop a last crate of medical supplies before the boarders closed he had said _screw it, what's the worst that could happen?_

Turns out the worst that could happen was that three minutes after he crossed into Tibetan Airspace the wave had gone out that the Chino-Indian Oligarchy had invaded Tibet, violating the Treaty of Anaheim, 2044 and that the World Council had ordered the GDF to mobilize to repel them. Two minutes after that Tibet had been declared a no fly zone and thirty seconds after that he'd been mobbed by a murder of cloaked Oligarchy army drones.

If it hadn't been for Kyrano, and for Dad and for Scott they would all have been dead twenty seconds after that. But Kyrano had taught him to drill until even the craziest scenarios seemed a little mundane. Dad had taught him to work the problem, to find ways to change the paradigm and Scott had, when he was twelve, taken him up over the Pacific and showed him how to pull off a spin dive in free fall, a move so reckless that it had got the both of them grounded and their flight privileges revoked for three months. Dad had made them spend the rest of winter break scrubbing turkey grease off hotel trays in the staff canteen at Tracy Industries Melbourne plant.

It was that spin dive that had saved his life. He had been able to lose the drones, blind their sensors momentarily by broadcasting a concentrated three second burst of junk data through his sat module, and put down in an abandoned airfield outside Lhasa.

He'd wanted to camp out in the jungle that bordered the airfield, watch for spooks and if the plane wasn't found and seized, which he hoped it might not be, try and take off under cover of darkness. But he was just the pilot and a junior one at that and Ollie, green as a head of cabbage, had argued they should try and reach the American Consulate and Dr Richards and Minka had agreed.

So they'd set out into the city and he'd gone with him, not knowing what would happen if they met any real soldiers.

And then the shooting had started.

And somehow – stupid _stupid –_ he had let himself get separated from the others and now they are out there, somewhere, getting themselves hurt or killed and it is all his fault.

He watches as the spider clambers from knuckle to knuckle to knuckle, then tips it onto the ground. It scuttles away and vanishes into a crack.

There comes the sound of the door scraping open and he quickly sits on his hands to hide the trembling.

Kyrano re-enters with a stool and a pair of MREs. He sets the MREs down on the table, one chilli con carne, the other spaghetti, and indicates Virgil should pick one. Virgil is not hungry but Kyrano has always taught all of them when that you don't know where your next meal is coming from, you eat what you're given and are grateful for it. He takes the spaghetti.

Kyrano opens the chilli and starts assembling his flameless heater. Technically he is a vegetarian, some left over vestige of his upbringing, now otherwise almost entirely discarded. But he is also the person who taught Virgil how to catch and skin a rabbit, how to fish with hook or spear. Kyrano is a man of many contradictions. Dad says that the thing that proves that Kyrano is the hardest man he's ever known is that Kyrano is the only person he's ever met who can clean his plate of Grandma's sweetcorn and broccoli bake and ask for second helpings.

Technically, Virgil is a vegetarian too, or at least that's what he's told his family. But that was for different, less honest reasons. It was fashionable and it had seemed one more way to prove that he fit in the hole he'd been pegged into. He'd stuck to the diet for five whole months, and then one day, in a war torn village in East Nepal, a family had offered him a bowl of goat stew and it had seemed contemptable to turn it down, just because Guru Kati said it clouded the creative humours, when they were offering him all they had.

Since then, he'd done as Kyrano had raised him to do. He ate what he was given and was grateful for it.

"What about my friends?" he asks, as Kyrano pours water on the heater.

"We located the doctor, Richards, this morning. We secured her a place on the Medicins Sans Frontieres convey being escorted out by the GDF. She should be out of the city by now. My men are searching the city for your other two friends. Once we find them, we'll get out by the river. A friend of mine is waiting with a chopper in lower Xang Cha. We should be there by morning. For now, we've got some time." He sets his chilli to cook. "Talk."

"About what?"

Kyrano shrugs. "Everything."

"You'll think it's stupid." Suddenly being shot seems to be a better alternative to trying to articulate how he had ended up in Tibet to Kyrano.

Kyrano gives one slow, thoughtful nod. "Agreed. You are a Tracy. It is in your nature to do either the cleverest thing or the stupidest thing in any given situation. Sometimes both. Usually both."

When Dad had founded Tracy Industries, the first person he had hired was Kyrano. It didn't matter that they were operating out of a garage, that they had no planes to pilot or that Tracy Industries wouldn't grow to a size where it needed a security chief for another four years. For the first three years Kyrano had hung around the office with no specific role. He'd made kochi for the engineers, moved boxes and done the company's tax returns. He'd chauffeured investors to and fro and beta tested product. Apart from Mom, he was the only person in the company who could stand up to Dad. Every Sunday the two families, Kyrano and Kayo and the Tracys and first their three, then four, then five boys, had had dinner together. Dad still said hiring him was the best business decision he had ever made.

He owned an eight per cent share in Tracy Industries, more than enough to retire on, more than enough to buy his own private island if he wanted, but instead he stayed with Dad, acted as his right hand man. The year after Dad had moved to the Pacific, Kyrano and Kayo had come too, moving into the guest house at the top of the island. He was family.

Virgil clears his throat. "I thought I could get it out of my system. Like a gap year."

"A gap year? And what did you think you were getting out of your system?"

"I don't know. Being a Tracy, I guess." He squirms.

"I see, so you would have a gap year in which you would secretly be yourself, and then you would go back to being someone you are not?"

Well, when you say it like that it just sounds dumb.

But every step in the chain of decisions had seemed logical at the time. Growing up he had loved to draw, would happily slip away for hours on end to sketch or paint. He had loved other stuff to. He had love flying and machines and swimming and knowing how things worked and math. But in his family none of those things seemed especially unusual, they were all necessary as breathing, whereas his drawing was something special and praiseworthy.

Other things had become special for his brothers as well. Flying definitely became Scott's. He would take Virgil up with him sometimes, as his navigator, and they would dip and roll through the Pacific skies and Virgil had thought it was the most magical thing he could ever do, until the day he completed his first solo circuit as a step to getting his private licence. He'd rushed home to tell Scott and Scott had looked at him, kind of blankly, muttered 'that's great, Virg,' and taken off, spent the day flying without him, been chilly for a week. Virgil's excitement had turned to ashes. Some special things, he realised, weren't more special when they were shared.

With school it had been different. He had always done fine at school until John had started winning all those academic prizes. But when Mr Murphy had come to him, told him that he had a real gift for mathematics and that he wanted to put his name in for the Candlemas Prize he'd been thrilled for two whole seconds and then terrified. What would it do to John if he found out they were competing for the same prize? What would happen if Virgil beat him?

So he had slowed down, pulled back. His grades had slipped. At first there had been a huge fuss. Special tutors were called in to assist him and John and Scott both took hours out to help him and seemed so pleased there was something they could give him a hand with.

By the time he was in high school he could hit the middle of the bell curve without thinking. And the thing was that no one seemed to mind, they seemed pleased. Dad didn't push him the way he pushed and bullied and cajoled Gordon to keep his grades up. He seemed happy to accept that his middle son was mediocre. As long as Virgil kept up with the couple of extra hours of tuition a week Dad never bothered him about it at all.

At 15 he'd tried to come clean to John during a tutorial. "Yeah, y is a dependent variable, I get it. Look, Johnny, it's fine, it's only polynomial regression." But John's hologram had smiled in a kind, if patronising way and gone right back to his patient explanation.

At 16, during the taxi ride from the hotel to Logan International after John's graduation, he had told Scott he was considering engineering. Scott had got so mad, had used so many filthy words to describe their father that their driver, a Boston cabbie, had pulled in on the middle of the freeway and ordered them out. Only the biggest tip of Virgil's life had got them safely to the airport.

"Listen, Virgil, this is all my fault," said Scott. "If I hadn't joined the GDF, if I had stood up to him, then he wouldn't think he could get away with trying to turn us all into his toy soldiers."

"But you like the Air Force."

"I – That's not the point. You don't let him tell you what to do, okay? You do exactly what you want to do. Got it?"

"Okay, Scott."

And then Scott had gone nuclear with Dad at Thanksgiving and he had caught Grandma crying into a slice of pumpkin pie in the back garden and he had promised her that he would make it right and he had gone to Dad the next day and said "Dad, I want to go to art school," and Dad had told him that he had his support whatever he wanted to do.

Being an artist when you grew up was something you said when you were a kid, right? I'm going to be an artist. I'm going to be a pilot or an astronaut or win the Olympics. Suddenly it was a reality, reading prospectuses and preparing portfolios and going to interviews. And the work he put in meant the quality of his stuff got much higher and Grandma had even said that one of his paintings reminded her of something Mom might do. And he'd thought for a time that he really wanted to do this.

Then Bucharest had happened and he knew he'd just been kidding himself.

He'd got to Chicago and his teachers had been good and his classes interesting and the air-conditioning had never worked. After enduring four weeks of alternating freezing and roasting, one day, in the middle of ceramics, he'd snapped. He'd marched down to the plant room, commandeered the super's tools and fixed the damn problem.

His sculpture teacher had come to find him. "What are you doing down here, Virgil?" she'd asked.

And he'd answered honestly, "I don't know."

He looks at Kyrano. "Dad says that whatever we do we should do it with a whole heart, give it our all. And it was so important to Scott. And it was so much money. I didn't want to let you all down, but I couldn't… I tried…"

"So you quit without telling anyone. But not before you removed your tracker and found a patsy to carry it for you."

"Yes." After John's kidnapping when he was nine years old they had all had subcutaneous trackers implanted in their forearms, which provided Dad and Kyrano with basic telemetry and their location should they need to be found fast. It had taken Virgil longer to find a fellow student about his height and weight and with a resting heartrate of fifty than it had to circumvent the tracker. He had paid the guy a thousand bucks to carry it around with him for the year in a small electrolyte pouch. There was also the other tracker they weren't supposed to know about. He had spent an unpleasant evening in October cutting that out of his thigh.

"And you took a job with this _Helping Hands_ place?"

"It was supposed to be supply runs. They already had a pilot in command, but he's a drunk. They needed someone to do the actual flying. I thought I could just do it for a while until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life. I like to fly."

Kyrano laughs softly. "Yes, I noticed."

"I don't suppose you could not tell Dad about this?" He offers Kyrano, his best pleading look.

Kyrano digs a spork into his chilli and spoons the first mouthful into his mouth. "Be serious, Virgil. He's known about it for months."

"Oh." Now he feels even more stupid. "But you never said anything."

Kyrano arches an eyebrow and Virgil looks away. "Does Scott know too?"

"I think it's best you tell Scott about this yourself."

"Oh."

"What is it you want to do now?"

"Go back, I suppose. Go back." His hands are still trembling. "Give the art thing another try."

 _"What if Virgil wants to be an artist?"_

But as much as Virgil tries to shift his gaze around the room, focus on the door, the walls, his dinner, anything, Kyrano is not looking away. His gaze cuts through him Then he says, "If that's what you want you will have my full support with your father."

"I… Thank you."

"If that's what you want."

 _"Well, what if he does?"_

"I do."

"But Virgil, I've seen the footage of your flight."

Virgil frowns. How is that possible? The only footage of his flight would have come from the drones, and even if Tracy Industries did technically have the capacity to obtain that data it would take days to recover it without alerting suspicion.

"I'm talking about Bucharest, Virgil."

Oh.

Before Virgil has a chance to respond, the door slams open and two men, Tracy Industry security agents, he supposes, hustle inside. They're carrying someone between them. In an instant Virgil sees that it's Minka. There's blood. There's a lot of blood.

Ollie stumbles in behind them. His face is ash grey and damp with sweat. He looks like he's going to throw up. A second later, he does throw up, retching noisily in the corner.

"Report," barks Kyrano. He's on his feet. So is Virgil. The men drag Minka into the room, lift her up onto the table.

"Found 'em hiding out in an old textiles mill, chief," says the one in the grey vest. "They almost had us pinned down. We got out through the underpass, but the girl got hit when we were evacuating 'em, and we picked up a tail."

"Did you lose it?"

"Don't know, Chief."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"Probably," says grey vest.

"Probably not," says the other one, who is wearing a navy baseball cap. "Edwin's trying to shake 'em now."

Kyrano is already moving, heading for the stairs. "Stay here," he barks as the door bangs behind him.

"Vee?"

Minka has an amazing button nose and dip-dyed pig tails. She wears massive combat boots and dreams of being a journalist of the sort that wear trench coats and keep pencils behind their ears and haven't existed for a hundred years. She's got a big Vietnamese boyfriend and also a girlfriend she says lives in New Orleans. Virgil has been in love with her for approximately six weeks and two days. And except to call him _soo cute_ and ruffle his hair she's always looked right through him.

She's looking through him now.

It's with the glassy-eyed stare of someone numb with shock. There's blood in a wet trail across the floor and all down the leg of her jeans. The red badge of a bullet wound is spreading out from her Doubledutch band t-shirt.

"Vee," he can hear the fright in her voice. Her hand is cold and clammy and she's too shut down for him to get a peripheral pulse.

Ollie is in the corner with his hands clasped around his head. The two security agents are pinned up against the wall.

"Hey, Minka." He takes his jacket off, pools it under her head. "How're you feeling?"

"Vee," Tears are welling at the corners of her eyes. "Is it bad?"

He glances down at the dark welt on her abdomen, the layers of fabric glued together by sticky ichor. "That? Nah, it's just a bug bite. By the time bikini season comes around you won't even be able to see it."

She giggles. It's a glassy sound.

He looks around for help, but the two TI guys are stuck to the wall like they're glued there, Ollie's crouched in a ball and Kyrano still hasn't returned. No one is doing anything.

"Is there a trauma kit? There must be. Kyrano doesn't keep a safe house without one." There's a mad moment when he hears that calm, steady voice and thinks that somehow one of his older brothers has arrived to rescue him, even as he recognises that the voice is his own. "Get it for me, please."

Navy cap pushes off from the wall and runs outside. He's back almost immediately, with a big red crate that unfolds like a tool box. Virgil digs through it, grabs a pair of latex gloves and a bunch of sterile swabs and thrusts them at grey vest. "Here, what's your name?"

"Ez. Aren't you-?"

"Ez, wash your hands, then apply pressure to the wound, right now."

He puts on his own gloves and tugs a cannulation kit out of the box. It's been a year and a half since he practiced putting an IV line in anyone, and that was on Gordon, who has an athlete's big, ropey veins. Minka is smaller and her veins have collapsed due to the shock, but he manages to get a line into her antecubital fossa.

"Get me a thousand mls of crystalloid. No, not the point four five per cent," he says when the agent reaches for the wrong bag of clear fluids, "Give me the Ringer's lactate."

He gets the fluid running, and slips his comm off his wrist, and onto Minka's. His own top of the range, TI prototype p-comm is back stateside, locked in a safe deposit box so Dad can't, hah, can't use it to track him. This is a cheap burner device, just about useful for basic telemetry and to make calls on the cellular network. Its blood pressure readings are only accurate to within 15 milmetres of mercury, but it, and the fluttery pulse in her neck, the lack of a pulse at her wrist, tell him her blood pressure is still too low. She's slipping in and out of consciousness.

"Ollie, get up, man. Minka needs you."

"Vagasil, what's going on man?" Ollie, who would usually not cross a room to spit on him if he were on fire, responds mechanically to the voice of authority. He staggers to his feet.

Virgil puts him sitting on the chair, because he doesn't have time to resuscitate him if he should faint. He sets him to keep pressure on the bag of fluid with one hand, and to hold Minka's hand with the other.

"Check in the fridge. Maybe there's O negative," Is his next instruction to navy cap, whose name turns out to be Soo.

He's in luck. There are two pints of blood in the fridge. He gets a second IV line into her other arm. Funny, but his hands aren't shaking anymore.

With the blood and fluid going into her, her blood pressure starts to pick up, sufficient enough anyway that he can turn his attention to the wound.

If it had been a knife wound it would have probably been too lateral to worry about hitting the aorta, but bullets are unpredictable and can ricochet. Still, the fact that they seem to be controlling the bleeding with pressure gives him hope that she hasn't ruptured a major blood vessel.

But there's bad news too. Below the iron tang of blood there's another, feculent smell, and that spells trouble. But there's very little he can do right now except fill the abdominal cavity with procoagulant foam and close over the ragged edges of the wound with a line of staples and a high pressure dressing.

"Who taught you how to do that?" asks Soo as he seals over the dressing.

"He did." He nods at the door. Kyrano has returned.

"We're clear for now, but we can't stay here. Let's move to the rendezvous point." He comes and inspects Virgil's work, gives a grunt of approval.

But Virgil catches his sleeve. "We can't."

Kyrano raises an eyebrow, so Virgil plunges on. "I think she's perforated her bowel, and she's still haemorrhaging. Xang Cha is nineteen hours away if we don't run into complications, and then another four on top of that for the extraction. She won't survive until then. She needs a laparoscopy and wash out."

To demonstrate he presses lightly on Minka's abdomen on the side distant from the wound. Minka groans as he takes the light pressure away, a sure sign of peritonism.

"I don't have an alternative extraction, Virgil, not one that's quicker than the river."

Virgil knows he's just a kid. He knows that's all Kyrano and his men see him as, but he also knows that if they wait Minka's going to die. And Kyrano might feel bad about that, but he's here to get Virgil out, and that's where his number one priority lies.

He knows that he's in way over his head. He knows these men are professionals. He knows that he should listen to them.

And he knows he's the only one who can save Minka's life.

 _Think, Virgil._ What would Dad do? _What would Scott do, or John?_

Well, John would make a plan, he'd think through every step. Scott would take that plan and act. And Dad would kick the ass of everyone who tried to stand in his way.

"I have an extraction route," he says. "Our plane, it's on a runway outside the city. It hasn't been discovered and I fully refuelled it from the reserves at the airfield. If we could evacuate to there we could fly out. Drone activity will be lower at night. If we run low we can be border in fifteen minutes."

Kyrano appears to think about it for a moment. "No," he says. "No. It's too big a risk."

Virgil steps around the table so that he and Kyrano are face to face. And for the first time in his life, Virgil realises he's got an inch on Kyrano.

"The left."

"What?"

"You asked me which knee."

A muscle thrums on Kyrano's jaw. His mandible slides from side to side. He harrumphs, then he turns to his men. "You heard Mr Tracy."

"Sir?" asks Soo.

"The airfield is nine clicks north-west of here. We'll travel in convoy. Radio Edwin, tell him to circle around. Soo, you're on point."

"Yes, chief."

"Mr Tracy, give your patient morphine. We're going to have to move her and we don't have a stretcher."

Virgil nods and unhooks a vial of IV morphine. Once he has shot it into her vein he gathers her up in his arms. "Okay, let's move out."

Ollie staggers ahead of him to the doorway, but stops and turns his head long enough to ask him, "Who are you anyway, man?" Virgil pushes him up the stairs.

It takes them two hours to get across the city. Night comes early here and twilight is falling like a silk shroud when Kyrano makes them abandon the jeeps and continue through the forest on foot. He won't let Virgil carry Minka and hugs close to him. If something goes wrong now, Virgil suspects, he's going to wake up in the back of a luxury plane with a splitting headache and no memory of how he got there.

There's been a guard set at the perimeter of the airfield, and Virgil braces for confrontation with Kyrano, but Kyrano doesn't seem in the least perturbed. He signals to Ez and Ez nods, takes off into the trees. Thirty seconds later there comes a huge explosion.

Virgil flattens himself to the dirt, but Kyrano drags him to his feet. The soldiers at the airfield are milling around, shouting in Mandarin too rapid fire for Virgil to keep pace with. Then nearly all of them take off at a run towards the source of the explosion, so only two soldiers are left on guard.

Kyrano's laser cutter makes short work of the drooping S wire fence. He signals Virgil, _wait,_ then slips between the cut edges of the wire, as swift and as silent as a jungle cat. There is no scuffle, no scream, just a soft wet thunk as first one soldier, then a second hits the tarmac. He motions for Virgil to run for the plane. As he does he slips around the side of the plane, to take out the third soldier, the one in the shadows, the one Virgil never even spotted.

"Come on." Virgil signals to the others.

His aircraft's a May-Cee cargo hauler, a piece of crap really, held together mostly by duct tape and hard work. She's more solder now than sheet metal. But boy, is he glad to see her. He gets Minka, Ollie and Kyrano's agents secured in the cargo hold, then sits into the pilot's seat and begins an accelerated pre-flight checklist.

"What do you think you are doing?" Kyrano stands over him, giving him that look. Virgil didn't hear him arrive.

"I could– I mean I could–"

Kyrano continues to give him that look.

He moves out of the pilot's seat.

Kyrano sits down. "Your inflight manoeuvres show promise but you need to work on your manoeuvrability and your landings. You want to be a real pilot you should be able to set down without engines on a strip of land this big."

Virgil blinks. "Huh."

"I'm saying, time for your next lesson, Virgil." He punches it.

They set down at a GDF military base in the Himalayas.

Kyrano has the GDF well briefed, so there's a crash team waiting on the tarmac. They slide Minka onto a gurney and begin secondary assessment as they run her back across the tarmac. Virgil runs alongside, but at the doors to the OR one of the orderlies puts up a hand to stop him, points to a plastic bucket chair. Sit. Wait.

A minute later, another orderly wheels Ollie past in a wheelchair, IV fluids latched to his arm. Virgil rises, gives the start of a wave, but Ollie turns his head away, and is wheeled through the swinging doors.

Twenty minutes later a GDF surgeon emerges to interview him. "Your friend have any medical history we should know about? On any medications?"

"I don't know, Ma'am. She didn't share that sort of stuff with me. Is she going to be alright?"

"CT shows illeal perforation, grade III peritonitis. Anaesthetics are putting her under now. Surgery's going to take the best part of five hours, but you probably saved her life. We'll see. Next time use an antibiotic wash out before you close up, and less foam, it can cause problems with adhesions down the line."

"Yes Ma'am," says Virgil and thinks, _next time._

But there's not going to be a next time, is there? This is it, he's done. He'll be lucky if Dad makes good on his constant threats to Gordon and gets him an entry level position in the mail room.

She peers at him a little closer. "How old are you, son?"

"Eighteen, ma'am."

"You did a good job." She takes out a scrap of paper, scribbles something on it and hands it over. It's her email address. "You ever need a recommendation, come talk to me. There's a canteen upstairs and to your left. They'll fix you something up. Could be a long night."

"Yes, Ma'am."

He goes to the canteen, but the smell of food makes his stomach buck so he stumbles outside onto the runway to get some air. There's no sign of Kyrano, or Ez, Edwin or Soo. Even the May-Cee has been removed from the runway.

He takes a couple of deep breaths, clenches and unclenches his fists. It's cold. A sharp wind sweeps across the runway.

The sky is a deep bruise purple. A pair of I-16 Talons are gearing up for take-off, their flight crews swarming over them as they perform the final preflight checks. In one of the bigger hangars they're rolling away what looks like a P-243 airshuttle. They must have used it in the evacuations.

Remembering the mini-binocs stored in his thigh pocket he pulls them out to get a better look. She's an airshuttle, alright, one of the newer models, with the slimmed-down vents. He's never seen one up close.

"Handsome machine, isn't she?" There's a woman standing about ten feet from him, following the line of sight of his binoculars. "They say she's the biggest in the air."

"No, the Queen Elizabeth Stratotruck is the biggest in the air, but the airshuttle's weight to power ratio is –" He breaks off as he realises that this was a test.

The woman is in her early fifties, dark skinned and with patrician features. Her coat bears the insignia of a GDF Colonel. Her gaze is appraising as she steps forward and holds out her hand. "I'm Colonel Casey, Mr Tracy. I'm a friend of your father's. If you'd like I'm sure we can arrange for a tour."

Virgil takes her hand, nods, but before he can say anything she continues smoothly, "I'll have one of our engineers show you around. The GDF's engineering programme is one of the best in the world. We have links with Cambridge, MIT and Stanford."

One of the Talons blasts down the runway and soars into the sky. Virgil can't help but turn his head to watch, and without a hitch Casey continues. "We also have the top flight school in the world. I'm sure your brother will have told you. There are lots of opportunities for a young man with promise, like you– "

"Back off, Catherine," someone growls.

Virgil turns. Dad stands six feet behind him, hands in the pockets of his grey wool coat. Kyrano stands silent and still at his right shoulder, his manner somewhere between loyal manservant and paid assassin.

"Dad."

In two strides Dad has closed the gap between them. He takes Col. Casey's hand and shakes it with the warmth of an old friend, but his gaze is steely. "This one's not for you. I _need_ him."

Casey sighs, "How do you always know what I'm going to do before I do it?"

Dad smiles, wolf-like. "I know what you're going to do before you know yourself. I know it before you get up in the morning."

Casey laughs and moves off. "Good to see you, Jeff. Take care."

"Old fox." Dad watches her go with something like amusement and waits until she has climbed back into her jeep. When she is gone, and Dad still hasn't said anything, Kyrano clears his throat and places his hand softly on Dad's shoulder. He whispers something into Dad's ear. Dad nods. Kyrano has his aviators on again and Virgil can't tell if he's looking at him. He walks past him without a word.

And leaves Virgil alone with his father.

To his surprise, Dad seizes him by the shoulders and squeezes until it hurts, pinning him in place so he can look him up and down. "You're in one piece, anyway. Are you alright?"

His hand is shaking again. He closes his fist and it stops. "Yeah. I mean, I think so. Yes. Are you mad?"

"Am I _mad_? After all this, that's your question? Are you kidding me? Virgil, I'm incandescent. You flew into hell's teeth, on untested, inferior equipment, with no back up. Christ, Virgil, if it were Scott– You're supposed to be my sensible child!"

"I'm sorry." Virgil's heart sinks even further.

"Why didn't you come to me? You could have come to me!"

No he couldn't and Dad must know it. "I knew I was letting you down. I didn't want to let you down."

"Yes, well. If you had been blown to smithereens I would have been quite let down." Dad turns away, watches the second Talon take off, digs his hands into the pockets of his coat, waits for Virgil to fill the silence.

Virgil scuffs the concrete with his boot. "Dad, I don't think I'm cut out for art school."

Dad's laugh is like a crack of summer thunder, but when he turns back to Virgil he is grave again. "I know. I've known for a long time."

For a moment he feels anger rise like bile in his throat. Because of course Dad would say that. Of course Dad would think that he's always known what's best. Dad has always wanted to mould them in his own image. Soldiers and pilots and astronauts, that's what he wants. He doesn't see Virgil as an individual, just as an extension of himself, determined to shape him as he sees best.

But as soon as it rises the anger bursts like a soap bubble. That's Scott talking, he realises. Except its Scott who's the one with the loud opinions. Scott who says 'don't do this, don't do that'. Scott, well-meaning and earnest, who is always trying to protect him from their father's will. But Dad has never forced him to do anything. If anything he's been passive. Dad, who can be such a martinet when it comes to Scott or to Gordon has just said 'okay' and 'as long as you try your best'.

Dad, he realises, has been giving him enough rope to hang himself.

And because he's Dad, he knows exactly what Virgil's thinking. "If I had just told you, you would have just dug your heels in. You're so stubborn. You're just like your mother."

It's like an uppercut to the jaw.

It seems so long ago now. He has trouble remembering so much about Mom but he remembers that night. He remembers the musty smell of the carpet as he lay at the top of the stairs, he remembers their voices raised in a rare fight, he remembers how John had found him and made him come to bed.

 _"What if Virgil wants to be an artist?"_ Mom had said.

 _"So what if he does?"_

And six weeks later she was gone. And Virgil had promised himself, had promised her…

One of his mother's paintings still hangs in the hall of the villa. It's an amazing thing, all light and shadows and life and death. It has always reminded Virgil of the son. When he thinks no one's watching Dad will stand in front of it sometimes, like he's soaking it up.

"It's what she hoped for me." Virgil says. "I want to be an artist." But no, that's not quite right. "I want to _want_ to be an artist." But he wants to do so much other stuff too. He wants to fly and pull engines apart and understand those higher order mathematics that are just tantalisingly out of reach, and feel the crunch of snow beneath his boots and, above all, help people. Painting the world just didn't seem _enough_. "But, I just… I just…"

Dad grips him by the shoulders again. His eyes are sky blue. They're Scott's eyes, printed over with crows' feet. Virgil's often thought how Scott looks so much like Dad, but this is the first time he's ever thought how Dad looks like Scott. "Going to art school does not make you an artist. Lucy understood that more than anyone I know."

"But she…"

"Son, listen to me, your mother was an extraordinary artist. Her piano playing was prodigious. She could make a chocolate soufflé that was… uh… edible. She also used to rebuild classic Hondas and fly paramedic missions into combat zones. I had to physically drag her out of a war zone when she was six months pregnant with you because she wanted to stay and help with a cholera epidemic. Your mother wasn't just one thing. I loved her because she wasn't just one thing. And what she wanted for you most of all, was for you to be _you_ , whoever that is, however many things that encompasses."

"Dad…"

"Believe it or not, despite what your brother says and thinks, it's what I want most for you too."

"Dad..."

"As long as you don't want to be an actor."

"Dad..."

"Or pursue a career in interpretive dance."

"Dad!"

"Jazz or modern ballet would perhaps be acceptable."

"Engineering," says Virgil to put a stop to this.

Dad doesn't even have the decency to seem surprised. "Fine."

"There's a school in Colorado…"

Dad gives a thoughtful nod. "Denver Institute of Advanced Technology, currently ranked the 144th in the world for its engineering programme. I don't think so. MIT. Their accelerated learning programme."

"Dad, come on. I'm never going to get into somewhere like MIT. I'm not –"

"Kyrano has Tracy Two fuelled and ready to go. I'm telling you this because if the next words out of your mouth are 'Dad, I'm not smart enough,' I will have him drop you back to downtown Lhasa and you can find your own way out. You turned in an exact 72 on every paper since the fifth grade. That is statistically _unlikely_. Good grief, t least Gordon had the good grace to vary his grades a little when he wanted me to think he was stupid."

Virgil looks at the tarmac. "My grades aren't good enough."

"They are if I offer to build them a new high energy building."

"Dad!"

Dad waves this objection away with a flick of his hand. "You've spent the last fourteen or so years pretending to be less brilliant than you actually are. So now you get to spend eighteen months pretending to be the boy whose father bought his way into college for him."

"It's not pretending if you actually do it, Dad!"

"There have to be some fringe benefits to being the son of a megalomaniac billionaire." Dad's tone changes a little, grows graver. "It will be hard. A different kind of hard than you're used to. Everyone will know how you got in. If you're lucky people will do their sneering to your face. Do you think that is something you can handle?"

This is a test too. So much with Dad is. "Isn't an accelerated learning programme at one of the top universities in the country hard enough?"

"Not for you. Not anymore. Play time is over, Virgil. I think you've proven that today. Time to step up."

"Stanford," says Virgil.

"Pardon?"

"They have an accelerated learning programme there. And their mechanical engineering programme is stronger than MIT's. I want to go to Stanford."

"MIT is–"

"Stanford."

Dad scratches his chin. "Hmm. We'll see."

Virgil allows himself a small smile. His heart is racing suddenly. He folds his arms. "Yeah, we will."

Dad snorts in amusement. Then beckons and starts to walk across the tarmac. "Alright, hotshot, let's go."

Virgil falls into step beside him. He looks at his hands, but they're not shaking anymore, even a little bit. Maybe standing up to Dad isn't as hard as he once thought.

"And Virgil, one more thing."

"Yeah, Dad?"

"You are grounded 'til you die."


	6. Reprise - The Runaway

**Coda 1**

 ** _In which Scott's head hits the bar._**

Ali misses the war.

The war had brought _La Butte_ to life. Its mirrors and stained glass ceiling, a century old, had gleamed like jewels. Raï and sometimes jazz would play here every night. The officers and spies of twenty nations would come to laugh and dance and drink and spend what cash and life they had left. The war had given La Butte back its soul.

Dour peacetime has robbed it again. The leash of law grows tighter around Algiers' neck every year and its people have lost their taste for liquor. He rarely gets foreigners in here anymore. Only, sometimes the man of many faces will come to conduct business, and even more rarely the Agents of Spectrum – all shadow coloured whatever their fanciful names – will come and sit in the corner and what they speak of Ali cannot guess at.

The young man in the corner is neither agent nor one of the faceless man's ilk. He is handsome, blue eyes, strong chin, dimples, the sort that in his younger years Ali might have swooned for, the sort in his old age he can still appreciate. His haircut and bearing say he is military. The steady way he is drinking suggests he is seeking oblivion.

On the table beside him is a box from the local _pharmacie._ He gathers this up now and staggers to the bar, where Ali stands, polishing a glass that wasn't dirty and is unlikely to get any cleaner.

"See this?" The young man rolls up the sleeve of his sweat-stained shirt and shows him a watch-comm, custom made, deceptively simple in its complexity. "You want it?"

"I would not know what to do with it, Sir."

"It's worth four thousand dollars," says the young man, a little uncertainly.

Ali shakes his head. No. They young man nods and then points to the bottle of whiskey on the top shelf, lays a hundred international credits on the bar.

Ali hands him the liquor bottle and the young man stumbles away again, this time in the direction of the bathroom.

The next several minutes allow Ali's unease, particularly about the contents of that pharmacie box, to breed. He has lived long enough that man's desire to drink himself slowly to death no longer perturbs him, but he will not preside over someone who wishes to hasten the job, particularly not in his bar.

He goes into the bathroom.

The boy sits in one of the stalls, his trousers thrown carelessly over the sink. There is already a bandage, wine coloured with blood wrapped around his upper arm. Lines of red criss-cross his thigh and a scalpel point is poised over the tender flesh above his femoral artery. He sloshes the alcohol over his skin.

"Sir, what are you doing?"

Ali is too late to stop him, the blade flashes down, making another deep incision. Ali reaches out to wrestle the scalpel away, but the young man drops it anyway and it skitters across the tile. He reaches instead with his fingers into the wound. He growls in pain as his fingers grope within his flesh.

Finally he pulls something free, a little metal chip, no bigger than his finger nail. The young man throws it on the floor, crushes it under his boot.

It's only then that he seems to notice Ali. He grimaces, see the mess, the blood on the floor. "I'm sorry," he says, "I'll… pay."

He kicks the door to the stall closed.

A few minutes later he limps back to the bar, pushes another hundred across the counter. Ali pours him another drink, but he shakes his head. "No. I need to keep my head clear."

It seems very late for that.

"You seem very young to have such terrible enemies," says Ali.

"It's not my enemies I'm running from," the young man's eyes are sad. "I can't… I don't know how to beat him. But if I don't play, then he can't win."

There is a man in the corner making a great study of not looking at the boy. Today he has the grey eyes and parchment skin of one who has spent his whole life in the desert. Tomorrow he may be smooth faced and manicured, or corpulent and sweating. Ali is careful not to look him in the eye.

The young man lurches to his feet. "Thank you… I'm… I'm sorry." He takes a few steps away from the bar and then turns back. "Do you know how to get out of Algiers?"

Ali wipes the counter down. "There is a port and an airport and a station for the train, but if you wish to disappear you talk to my friend in the corner."

He nods and for the first time the young man seems to realise that they are not alone. His eyes meet the many-faced man, who nods to him. Uncertain, the boy nods back.

The many-faced man reaches out long, yellowed fingers and beckons the boy over.

The boy steadies himself against the bar and moves to join him.

* * *

Virgil wakes in a panic, his heart racing, fight or flight reflexes fully engaged, waiting for an attack, for the bullet that will crack his skull open.

Instead he is assaulted by familiar sights, familiar smells. Tracy Two is one of the fleet's older models. Much slower than Tracy One, it's been shuttling the family to and fro for as long as he can remember. He can smell the deep, rich scent of the leather seats, see the stain on the carpet where Scott threw up after Gordon bet him he couldn't eat a thousand gummy worms, touch the marks on the wall where he had scribbled in crayon as a child.

The whole thing is totally disorientating.

The cabin is empty and the door to the cockpit is shut tight. He reaches for a bottle of water on the table and slugs it back, crumpling the bottle up with one hand. Rubs the grit out of his eyes.

They've left his p-comm on the table beside him, they must have retrieved it from its safe deposit box. He slips it on his wrist and checks his messages.

Along with his emails there's a video message from Gordon.

He flicks the message open and Gordon's hologram floats in front of him, dressed strangely conservatively in jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt.

"Heya, Virg." The hologram fidgets. "You're still not picking up. Maybe you're mad at me. I guess I can't blame you if you are. Look, I'm going off the grid for a while. Nothing bad, I promise, just got to focus for a while… I'll explain when I see you. Hey, do me a favour, okay? I know I don't have the right to ask but… Look after Alan while I'm gone? I know I don't have to ask. You'd do that anyway, right? But maybe just… maybe more than usual. I dunno. He's lonely." His head twists around as if someone's calling his name. "Got to go. And Virg, sorry I'm such a douche, man, okay?"

The hologram blinks out. Virgil watches it one more time. He thinks about calling Alan, but of course it will be four AM back home. He tries calling Gordon and gets no reply.

He scrolls through his camera files until he finds the packet he's looking for, the pictures of their impromptu Christmas in Tallahassee. He skips through the shots of the two of them pulling crackers and playing mini-golf. Eventually he finds what he's looking for, a photo of Gordon holding a mammoth piece of pecan pie. He is wearing a balloon crown, a pair of delighted six year olds and the world's biggest grin. Their waitress had given him the pie, gratis after Gordon had made her two little girls, waiting dejectedly at the counter for Mom's shift to end, balloon brontosauruses and taught them 'Toothy the Dinosaur' with all the rude bits left in.

'See, not everyone thinks you're the bad guy,' he writes on the photo and is about to send it off when he hears raised voices coming from the cockpit.  
It's Dad and Kyrano. Except it doesn't sound like Kyrano.

The first time Virgil ever heard Kyrano raise his voice, ever heard his accent slip out of neutral Oxbridge tones, was in the time after Mom's funeral, when Dad had sat, hollowed out and broken, in a slump on the couch for days on end. When Scott had tried to show him the harrier jet they had built out of Lego, Dad had smashed it out of his hand.

Scott had not cried at the funeral. He had been sweet and stoic and patient, fetching chairs for elderly relatives, dealing with Alan's tantrums, getting through his reading without a single tremor. Looking back now, it makes Virgil profoundly sad to think about it, a little boy labouring to be an adult as his world fell apart around him, but back then all he had felt was awe, at his amazing, brave hero of a brother.

But when the jet that the two of them had worked so hard to build had broken into a thousand pieces on the hardwood floor, a single, terrible sob had shaken Scott's whole frame. He had steadied himself, biting down on the inside of his cheek, then turned and fled.

Virgil had tried to gather up the pieces of the harrier, until Dad had snarled, "Leave it!" then he had crept into Scott's bedroom, the one in San Francisco with the sky blue walls and the view of the sea. He had found Scott tucked between his bed and his locker, wheezing and snotty and almost sick with grief. Virgil had squeezed himself in beside him, made himself as small as possible, braced his shoulder against Scott's elbow and his head against his shoulder, and Scotty had let him stay there as he cried himself out.

And presently, through the walls, Virgil had heard Kyrano, his accent so thick that at first he was confused as to who it could be, shouting at Dad. "I love you like you are my own family, but if you ever take your grief out on that boy again, I will show you rage without end or equal."

The next morning Dad had been shaved and his shirt had smelled of detergent and not of musk and whiskey, and there had been waffles and fresh juice for breakfast, and later he had taken all five of them out to Land's End and he had told them that though Mom was gone they were still a family and that he loved them more than anything else in the world.

Dad exits through the cockpit door. He seems calm and collected. His face is blank of emotion. He closes the door behind him. "Virgil," he says.

And Virgil knows with a terrible certainty, something awful has happened.

He gets to his feet. "It's Scott, isn't it?"

 **End of Part One**


	7. Interlude - Between Brothers

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

HEY YOU! Yes, you. The person who wandered inside, read a few lines if chapter one and thought, _you know, I'm not convinced she knows what she's doing, maybe I'll just skip ahead to see if it gets interesting,_ who went to the drop down menu and spotted the chapter called 'Between Brothers' and said, _excellent, lets just skip to the part where there is a dramatic confrontation between brothers and see if she's any good at all._ And skipped all the stuff that proceeded it.

I just want you to know that

1\. I am wise to your tricks. I have pulled your tricks before. I KNOW you better than you know yourself.

2\. Joke's on you. There is not one Tracy brother to be seen in this chapter.

3\. Actually, I do kinda know what I'm doing. I can string a couple of sentences together anyway and when I'm not JUDGING YOU for your reading practices I can be quite entertaining. So before you go read this chapter (which is an awesome chapter but better with, you know, _context)_ consider going back and reading the other chapters. Read the Virgil chapter. Everyone always skips the Virgil chapter, which is a shame because it's a really good chapter.

And then if you think I've wasted moments of your life you can't get back, come yell at me in the comments. Come yell anyway. I will be tickled pink by your yelling.

Okay, rant over, Swallow out.

* * *

INTERLUDE - BETWEEN BROTHERS

From the window of the Gravity Bar, the Seoul Skyline has a phosphorescent glow, like it's a living organism, one of the men of war that so fascinate Gordon. It is beautiful and poisonous all at once.

In the foyer, a K-pop star is falling for a British journalist, a couple of high end boxing promotors are negotiating the winner of next month's heavyweight world title, the French ambassador is exchanging smiles with a honeytrap hired by her wife to seduce her.

All of this the dark-eyed man notes and dismisses as not his business as he moves through the crowd like a barracuda through the shoals of fish. He rides the elevator up through two hundred floors of glass and carbon in silence, tips the busboy well and steps out onto the bar, removing his dark glasses as he does. No one pays him a second glance. In his tailored Armani suit he walks with the casual confidence of one who has nothing to fear.

The floor of the Gravity Bar is amorphine, a smart plastic, perfectly transparent. It offers a vertiginous view of the atrium hundreds of feet below, but holds onto the light of the city, suffusing the bar with a pearly glow. The roof and walls are glass, supplemented by an augmented reality display that ensures that the view from The Gravity Bar is not just the most spectacular in the city, but on the continent. Tonight the orbs of Van Gogh's Starry Night fizz high in the sky, appearing to bathe Seoul in their fiery glow. Neophytes stop to gape and laugh at the skyline, but the dark man pays it no more than a contemptuous flicker of his attention.

Kyrano takes a seat at the marble bar. He touches his graphite credit card to a discrete chrome node and waits for the bartender to bring him his Scotch. His younger self might scoff at this old man who has become so comfortable in a world of such opulence, but his younger self knew very little of the world. In the last twenty years he has come to know the excesses of extreme wealth almost as well as he knows the desperation of total poverty.

Yet though he can move through this glamourous company with ease, in his heart of hearts he would prefer that this rendezvous were elsewhere. There is still a part of him that believes that shadowy dealings should be left to the shadows. Anything else feels dishonest.

But the man he has come to meet has always had a taste for luxury, and money can guarantee secrecy just as easily as dank dives and dark corners. Scanners at every entrance to The Gravity Bar erase even the best of recording devices. The specially treated glass in the roof shields the guests from long lens photography or satellite surveillance. Discrete and well-dressed men with an understated gift for violence are stationed at regular intervals to ensure the guests are not disturbed. The Gravity Bar is a playground where the elite can indulge their passions and vices in perfect privacy.

He sips his drink and waits.

Presently he notices the woman sitting at the bar, her fingers splayed around the stem of a champagne flute. Her eyes are dark and kohl-lined. Her crimped hair is Harlow blonde. Her lips are a perfect red kiss. She could be a starlet or a high class escort. She could be, but she is not.

He makes no great effort to hide his stare. She is meant to be looked at. But his careful reconnaissance reveals no evidence of where her weapon might be concealed beneath the slip of artfully draped gold sequins.

She gives him a coy smile and he raises his glass to her in a toast, then follows her gaze to where a man has come to take his seat at the table in the corner.

He nods to her, and rises.

He has spent time, more time than he would like to admit, thinking about how the man he waits on would choose to appear tonight: as a stranger, a friend, or as a caricature of some loved one long lost. In their infrequent meetings over the last two decades, he has appeared as all three.

But tonight some whim has prompted him to appear in what are a close approximation of his own features, though smoothed of the terrible scars of the smallpox pandemic that had almost claimed his life as a child. His teeth shine preternaturally white. A blood red handkerchief lies against the breast of his white linen suit like a bullet wound. His eyes are liquid green, their father's eyes, Tanusha's eyes.

His Scotch swirls in its tumbler as Kyrano seats himself across from him. He lifts a hand and a second glass is placed before Kyrano.

Kyrano raises the glass, rolls the amber liquid around the rim and then drinks without fear. The man who now calls himself The Hood would be personally offended at the suggestion that he would waste fifty year old Glenfidditch just to poison his brother.

"You've gotten old," he says.

"So they tell me."

"But no less humourless. How is my dear Tanusha? Is her training progressing? Tell me, did she like her birthday present? Or perhaps she never received it."

Every year he sends Kayo a gift, each more lavish and beautiful than the last. A custom Porche, the deeds to a Tuscany villa, a pair of gorgeously crafted pistols. Every year Kyrano's heart swells a little more with pride when his daughter, his beautiful, brilliant daughter, orders the things destroyed out of hand. "She received it."

"She must be quite formidable now. And as beautiful as her mother."

"Will we talk of the weather now? The cricket? Do you favour England for the Ashes, or Australia?" He presses both hands on the table, leans forward. "Do you have a monologue prepared from Othello? Your theatrics bore me. You have set your scene, arranged your actors, made me dance to your tune…"

"My dear brother, you have not even begun to dance…"

"The boy, Belah," he hisses.

The Hood's laugh is as deep and rich as the whiskey. His face is unnaturally smooth, as if every imperfection has been digitally excised. "Do you think I have him stashed away in half a dozen safe deposit boxes? How marvellously vintage of me. But perhaps Jeff Tracy would not mind. Perhaps he would relish the chance to rebuild his son in his own image. Is that the sort of mad science he dabbles in now?"

Kyrano's composure is starting to crack like cheap varnish. He knows it and to his annoyance, so does his brother. He calms himself. "Did you take him?"

"You know that I did not. But what was I supposed to do? When the lamb bastes himself in mint sauce and walks into the tiger's den of his own accord is the tiger supposed to refrain from taking a bite? Even my self-control has limits. He found me."

"And what did you do with him?"

"Strung him up. Sliced him open. Fried his liver and ate it on a bed of baby gem. Fed him to the woodchipper. Even now little bits of him are being packaged up in Tiffany boxes and sent to his father, his brothers, his grandmother." He laughs again, as if this is absurd, as if every death attributed to him is just fanciful exaggeration.

"Don't pretend you are not capable of it."

"Your mother used to tell us stories, didn't she, about what happens when you pluck the golden feathers from the swan? Killing him brings me nothing but fleeting gratification. I take it from your state of agitation that you could not find him yourself."

The trail had gone cold in Algiers. Not just cold, stone cold, dead cold. Scott's got his father's brains if he ever stopped long enough to use them, and he's got a certain cunning that is also a family inheritance, but Kyrano doesn't believe for a second he's capable of disappearing so entirely as he has of his own free will.

"You've been looking in all the wrong places. You think the boy won't debase himself? You're wrong."

He laughs again and takes another sip. "But I am talking to you like you are my equal and not a dog that has been taught to stand on his hind legs and parrot his master's words. Present me with his offer."

"You haven't shown me you have anything that I want."

The Hood twists the ring on his finger, activating the projector concealed in the gem. A grainy hologram appears over the table.

The boy is pale and those blue eyes stare at the floor in a habit that is most unlike him. There is a smear of blood on the collar of his shirt but otherwise he seems unharmed. "Tell me from whom are you running?" asks a voice, off camera.

"Why do you need to know?" His expression twists into frustration bordering on petulance, as if he is still that little boy trying to make sense of the world. _Why?_ His favourite question, but more focused than his brothers, whose curiosity has stretched towards every horizon. _Why did the soldiers shoot those people if they weren't hurting anyone? Why are people still dying hungry if we overproduce food by a million tonnes per year? Why didn't anyone do anything? Why did my Mom have to die? Why, Kyrano?_

"I need to know who will be searching you out before I get invested," says the voice. "I don't like to run afoul of powerful and dangerous people."

"My family. My father and… his associates. They are powerful. And dangerous, I suppose." He glances to camera, like a scolded child, before the hologram vanishes.

"Now you've seen my wares. Make me an offer." The Hood sits back, a wave of his hand brings another Scotch. "What is he worth to you?"

Not long ago he had argued no, that negotiation was the wrong tactic, that bribery would never prevail, that this was a sign of weakness. But that argument is over and his employer is his employer, so he says, "For the safe return of his son, Mr Tracy has authorised me to offer you two million credits now, and a further three million when the boy is returned home."

The Hood makes a show of considering this. "No. Offer me more. Offer me ten million credits."

"We will offer you eight million credits. Two to be paid now, six to be paid – "

"More. Offer me more."

"We will not – "

"Offer me fifty million credits, a hundred."

"We will not."

"Tell him to offer me a billion credits and your own precious daughter. Do you think he would do it? I think he would hand her over without a thought." His smile widens. Those capped teeth are like two lines of soldiers. "Offer me two billion credits. Offer me four. It will not be enough. It will never be enough. There's only one thing I want."

"Name it." His throat is dry.

"I want the titan astride the world. I want Tracy Industries."

It is a mammoth task, takes every iota of self-control he possesses, but he manages to supress his shiver of revulsion at the thought of his brother at the reins of Tracy Industries and instead to laugh in his face. "You will never have it. He will never give it to you."

But those perfect teeth flash again. "You misunderstand, little brother. He need not lift a finger. You see, very soon the great Jeff Tracy will be out of the picture and that boy, that rash, stupid, raging boy, will inherit the kingdom. Won't that be an interesting day?"

"Brother…"

"I know weakness when I smell it, and it rolls off him like a stench. Just the slightest adjustments, a pinch there, a twist here and I will teach him to pull his kingdom apart brick by brick." He leans forward. "Is his father a betting man? Would he care to wager those two million now and three million later? Which will give first do you think? The boy's morals or his sanity?"

He rises. "So you may tell your master this. He need not embarrass himself by offering baubles. I will return Scott Tracy in my own good time with not a hair on his head harmed, but with perhaps a few nasty new habits. Let us see if his father wants him back then."

The beautiful woman from the bar joins them at their table. The Hood kisses her hand before linking his arm through hers.

"Why then?" says Kyrano. His mouth is dry. "Why invite me here for this performance? Do you like the sound of your own voice so much?"

The Hood leans down so he can whisper in his ear. "Oh, Bhanji, can't you guess? I would have done it anyway, but now I know you love those boys _and that makes all the difference_."

He offers him a courteous bow. "Have a pleasant evening, little brother."


	8. Gordon - The Trouble with Redheads

_**Gordon – The Trouble with Redheads**_

 _In which Lady Penelope Creighton Ward attends WASP's annual gala – Virgil Tracy cleans out his locker – Alan Tracy longs for meteor showers - John Tracy constructs an ingenious playlist – Lieutenant George Sheridan makes a friend and there is still no word of Scott Tracy_

There's no getting away from it. WASP has problems.

His superior officer totally has it out for him. His fellow cadets have all dropped their sense of humour down a sea trench. His teachers think irony is that element that comes before cobalt in the periodic table, and their supreme commander makes Dad look like a paragon of fatherly virtue and is, it is alleged, secretly preparing his organisation for the day when the world is invaded by marauding merfolk.

In the two weeks since he's been stationed at the World Aquanautic Pacific Rim Naval Base and Research Institute, more affectionately known as The Conch, Gordon's learned more than he ever hoped to about navigation, scouting, aquanautics and marine geology and also more than he ever wanted to about petty bureaucracy, tedious procedure and whether or not all fish men have visible gills. It turns out, he's recently learned over the course of a stultifying two hour lecture, not all of them do.

All this, he's trying to explain to the new cadet. Which is weird, because all she asked him was the way to mess hall seven.

They are standing at an intersection in the Conch's lower levels, where he found her trying to decipher one of the digi-plans.

She's just off the transport from Marineville, she tells him, having obtained special dispensation to complete her paramedic training before joining the other cadets for basic training, and she's finding the whole place totally bewildering.

He shoots her a smile, medium wattage 'coz there's no smiling at WASP and tries to reassure her. "Don't worry about it. I was like that to when I first got here too."

And that's kind of a lie, but only kind of, because Gordon Tracy has a brother who sent him a schematic of The Conch and told him to memorise it, and Gordon Tracy spent the flight from Orlando to Seattle doing just that, and Gordon Tracy probably now knows his way around the Conch better than most long term residents, but he's not Gordon Tracy right now. He's Cooper Waverly, plucky, twenty-one year old former lifeguard from Nantucket, with a degree in Aquaculture and a lifelong desire to become one of WASP's finest.  
And Cooper Waverly, he has decided, has a thing for redheads.

Flipping both of his food trays into one hand – no easy feat he hopes she notices – he manipulates the digiplan. He ditches the junk – officers' only quarters, air duct schematics, in case of giant squid attack escape routes – until he has the plan dialled down to a basic schematic. He marks an X on the map with his thumb. "See, it's right here?"

She glances up at him and smiles. "Right."

Did he mention that she's a couple of inches shorter than him, which is _amazing_. All the girls in Tallahassee were swimmers, and they all had those long swimmers' limbs and, look, his father and brothers are all reaching for six foot, okay, he just hasn't hit his growth spurt yet, okay, and maybe it's nice sometimes to have a girl look up at you instead of down her nose like every other girl you know, _okay_?

And he wasn't smelling her hair when she glanced at her feet, okay. He was just noticing the colour and marvelling how the same shade that makes older brothers look like overgrown carrots, can make girls look so incredible.  
She's probably a couple of years older than him. But then everyone round here is older than him. And she's not older than Cooper Waverly.

"Oh, yah, I guess it's not that fah afta all," she says, examining the map. She also has this amazing Southie accent, which is totally adorable, while somehow also being the sexiest thing he has ever heard.

"Yah… I mean, yeah. You're almost there." He gets her to hold out her wrist and loads the schematic into her p-comm. Her tag reads Cadet Schloss-Krunfield, but there's no way that he can think of her as that, so he decides in his head she's going to be Red.

"You're not coming to mess, are ya?" She asked a little hopefully, "Only I don't know anyone and I thaught maybe we could…"

He puts up his free hand to stop her before the temptation becomes too much. "Sorry, wish I could but I'm assigned to mess eight. And," he brandishes his tray, "I gotta go meet someone."

"Aw, right, course," Does he imagine the disappointment he reads in her eyes? "Then, it was good to meetya. Maybe we'll see each other again." She remembers an awkward salute.

He can't return the salute without firing chicken Vindaloo all over himself, her and the ceiling, so he has to nod instead. "I hope so."

"Bye." He gets to watch her leave. Better yet he gets to watch her stop at the corner and glance back, and he gets to see her blush when he catches her looking. _Alright._

He grins – _this is WASP, Cadet Waverly, there's no smiling at WASP_ – remembers to turn it down a notch and continues on his way.

Okay, so maybe WASP isn't all bad.

Whistling, he makes for an access elevator and hits the button for the lowest level, switching his trays from hand to hand.

The Conch is an enormous superstructure on an artificial island rising out of the Equatorial Pacific. It had once belonged to Sharpo Pseuss, a tech billionaire with ambitions even more maniacal than Dad's, who had intended it be the cradle of Newtopia, Pseuss's new, perfect Libertarian society. When the Global Conflict had broken out, Pseuss had seen the opportunity to exercise his right to personal happiness and tried to kickstart Newtopia by shooting off a couple of HALO missiles in the direction of his nearest neighbour, in this case Hawaii.

How those missiles had been disarmed and Pseuss left hogtied on the steps of the Honolulu PD, was one of those stories from the war Dad and Kyrano _just couldn't talk about._

WASP had seized The Conch as its Pacific Base during the war and had over time, built it up into a military and scientific centre second only to Marineville in importance. Its upper levels, once meant to be ballrooms and pleasure parlours, have been retrofitted into lecture halls and laboratories, while it's middle levels house the Naval Academy and WASP's West Pacific force. There isn't a higher concentration of aquanautic expertise anywhere on the planet.

That it also seems to have the world's highest concentration of humourless, paranoid, conspiracy nuts is just an unfortunate side effect.

The elevator doors slide open and he's hit with a blast of cold air.

One of the many interesting things about the conch is that it is made of periwilyte, an organic polymer, grown rather than built. When exposed to sunlight, it turns every colour from coral to sunset pink, absorbs the sun's heat and radiates it back at night.

But down here in the foundation levels, the walls have no heat or light to absorb and they remain stubbornly ash grey. It's always cold down here and there's always a sheen of condensation on the smooth walls. Pseuss hadn't built the lower levels with comfort in mind.

He kicks open an access hatch and climbs down the ladder. It's no mean feat while balancing two trays. He calls down the access tube. "Hey, Phones. They were all out of the shrimp so I got you the chicken vindaloo. Can't guarantee there's any chicken in it, though." He drops onto the deck.  
Phones sits in his usual place, with his leg propped up on the bench and his ubiquitous headphones around his neck. "That's okay, Coop. Just stick it here."

Gordon had met Phones on his second evening in The Conch, when Interim Cadet Chief Tempest, annoyed at Cadet Waverly's habit of popping up like a jackrabbit, had sent him to drop a package to Phones' hidey hole.  
When Gordon had arrived, Phones had been using hydrophonics to track a pod of sperm whales fifty miles out. Gordon, fascinated, had mentioned seeing sperm whale skeletons in the natural history museum, and how he had noticed pitting almost identical to the ones human skeletons developed when they got the bends. Rather than dismissing him, Phones had put the sounds on the speakers for him to hear and Gordon had been able to stand transfixed for almost fifteen minutes, listening to the whale song.

Afterwards, they got chatting and Gordon had come up with some excuse to come back and see him the next night and to keep coming back. Phones is the senior officer in charge of the sonar and phonography archives, all housed in the lowest levels. He says he likes it down here, below sea level and away from all the chatter, that this is the best location for uninterrupted sound recordings and he has no interest in what's going on in the upper levels. Still, it hadn't taken Gordon long to figure out that with his gammy leg he was having a hard time getting up and down the access hatch, so Gordon had offered to bring him his meals.

It means a detour three times a day from his own mess to the officers' mess to the lower levels, but it is absolutely worth it. Phones has rapidly jumped to the top of Gordon's list of favourite people at WASP. He's chilled out and funny in a way almost no one else at WASP is. He seems to have forgotten more about comms, navigation and marine geography than Gordon's teachers ever knew, and best of all, the one time Gordon casually dropped the tuna men of Cape Cod into conversation he had rolled his eyes and murmured, '"Don't believe everything you read, Coop."

"How's our girl?" Gordon asks, bringing the trays over and pulling up a stool. "Any movement?"

Phones had detected a pod of humpbacks overnight, including one cow close to the end of her 18 month gestational period. The signs he had picked up suggested the pod was getting ready for her labour. He's hoping to record the birth.

"Still hanging in there," says Phones, taking his tray.

Gordon sits and uncovers his own meal. Real meat is an officer's privilege. NCOs and cadets dine on processed kelp. Tonight it's been dyed and flavoured to look like a beef burger. It's stone cold by now, but that hardly matters. Warm or cold, burger or spaghetti shaped, the kelp tastes mostly of beige.

Over dinner they talk sonography, and Phones looks over the problems he set for Gordon the night before. Sonography is not part of the basic syllabus at WASP. It has little place in the modern navy since satellite multicountour geomapping took over, but Phones is passionate that it still has a place in submersible navigation and he's teaching Gordon all about it.

"No new problems, tonight," he says, when he's done correcting Gordon's work. "You're gonna have your hands full, anyway."

Gordon groans. "Are you coming?"

"Temp's trying to make me. But I don't know, I'd rather stay here and listen out for my girl." He runs a hand through the coarse ginger bristles sprouting like wheat stalks from the crown of his head. "I think I'm full. D'you want my – Damn!"

He's knocked his pudding cup from his tray and onto the floor. Custard goes everywhere. He tries to stand but his bad leg fails him and he collapses back into his chair. "Damn. Damn. Damn."

"Here," Gordon jumps down, grabs a cloth. "Don't worry about it, Phones. It's below your pay grade. Cleaning the deck is a swabbie's job. Here." He mops up the mess.

"Dammit," Phones smacks his leg. "Don't ever get sick, Coop. Ever."

Phones doesn't talk about his injury, though rumours abound. Fire. Flood. Shark. Fighting off a grop of sexy mermaids. Gordon had got the real story from one of the cooks in the officer's mess.

Lieutenant George "Phones" Sheridan was one of the best comms and navigations officers WASP had ever known. He had been assigned, not just as first officer of a STINGRAY class sub, but as the first officer of SHE, the prototype an most advanced of all the STINGRAY.

He had been injured last year in the North Shelf Catastrophe, when a chain reaction in the magmosphere had caused all the thermadon wells in the North Atlantic to go up at once. He'd been caught in an exploding rig and suffered a smashed pelvis, commuted tib-fibula break, shrapnel injury to the femoral nerve and extensive third degree burns. Had all this stopped him going back into the rig and carrying his unconscious partner out of the inferno? It had not.  
The doctors had done their best with the burns. The fracture had set badly and had had to be surgically broken and reset. Nerve damage was permanent without triple crown health insurance. Phones had politely declined honourable discharge or extended shore leave, and as a compromise had been allowed to come here to supervise the archives. Once a day he struggles out of his bunker to the gym to spend an hour with the physio. The rest of the time he spends down here, mostly forgotten about, except by Cooper Waverly.

"You should get going," says Phones when Gordon's done ringing out the cloth in the sink. "You're going to be needed up there soon."

Gordon knows a dismissal when he hears it, and Phones is already putting back on his headphones. "Okay, call me if you need me." He backs off, moving towards the rear bulkhead.

The other big benefit of befriending Phones, is the use of one of the old archiving booths. As long as Gordon puts in a couple of hours cataloguing old recordings for the digital archive a week, he's been allowed to make it his own personal space. At a luxurious three by three metres it's got twice the space of his rack room and more importantly, uninterrupted and – with a little tinkering – completely unfettered comm access.

He boots up the holocomm. It's so old it's practically analogue. He's been working on upgrading it with scavenged parts. It's not the sort of work that falls within his area of expertise. As a kid he'd only ever been interested in DIY electronics if it could be used to melt something down, lock someone out or blow something up. But he's been learning and, besides, he's had help.

"Polar Research Centre from The Conch, do you read me?"

"Hi Cooper." John's image springs up beside him. He's sitting cross legged on his bunk and wearing the pair of thermal pyjamas with the tasteful Starfleet logo that Alan got him for Christmas. "How was your day?"

"Amazing! Did you know Squidmen will lace the water with their eggs, and then their eggs will incubate in the warm squishy parts of your body, before rupturing your small intestine when they hatch, fully grown?" He grins.

John's eyebrows go up but he doesn't pass comment.

"That's privileged information though, so don't spread it around. We don't want to cause a panic."

"Right. I've got some more documents for you to look over." There's a data packet already coming down the link.

Gordon's never shared a secret with John before. He's shared secrets with Virgil. He's shared _lots_ of secrets with Alan. He's even shared secrets with Scott, though usually of the 'Tell anyone you saw me sneak out and I will fly you out to the most desolate, shark-infested waters I can find and _strand_ you there on a rock! See how you like swimming then,' variety. But sharing a secret with John, something precious, something just between the two of them, that's a whole new experience.

It's cool.

It's also very, very hard work. Most other people's secrets don't come with homework.

"John, what even is this?" He thumbs through the dense text file John's just dumped into his data tree. "A form of torture?"

They have been meeting up twice a day for never less than thirty minutes and never more than an hour, to go over things and make plans. There's a seven hour time difference between WASP and the polar research centre, so John calls Gordon at twenty three hundred each night, just as his day is ending and John's waking up, and Gordon calls him back at seventeen hundred each evening, when its mess time for Gordon and John's in his bunk.

John is – well to be honest Gordon's sort of in awe of John. It's like John's been preparing for this his whole life… which, okay, yeah maybe he actually has. Maybe they've all been preparing for this their whole lives and Dad just, whoops, forgot to tell any of them, but if Gordon's been preparing for this his whole life, well he certainly doesn't _feel_ prepared.

John, on the other hand, seems like he's just been waiting for Dad to flip the switch. He's got charts and lists and diagrams and _opinions_ about everything. How many category one hurricanes are predicted to occur each year for the next five years? John knows. What's the maximum time an astronaut can be active in a high stress environment without needing to sleep? John knows. What's the best way to triage patients after an earthquake when the risk of aftershocks makes the environment hazardous? John knows that too.

For his part, Gordon's contributed a fitness and dietary regime for them both, which John has adhered to, though sometimes through gritted teeth. He's also been doing some research on new smart fabrics and thermoregulating climate suits, which he thinks could come in handy if they're out in all sorts of conditions. Finally, he has created a kickass playlist, which John somehow hasn't appreciated and _probably hasn't even listened too._

So, it's a work in progress, okay?

"It's the International Aviation Authority Pilot Handbook." John tells him.

"Memorise it. There's an IAA exam centre in Honolulu, they're conducting the written exam for Instruments Certification in three weeks. I've signed you up."  
Gordon does his best impression of one of Phones' sperm whales. More exams. "Do I have to? I'm training to be an aquanaut. You know, under water? Shouldn't I focus on that first and leave the piloting stuff until next year? I mean, if there's one thing this family isn't short of– "

John rolls his eyes. "You've got a sports' licence, Gor – Cooper. Not even a private licence. A sports' licence. Redundancy is going to be our biggest weakness, because we'll have none. Only 19 per cent of category one catastrophes used or could have used a submersible last year. Of all of us you're going to have to be the most flexible so you can assist the pilot of Craft Two."

It was John who first adopted referring to the craft by number based on estimated registration date, but by unspoken consensus neither of them refer to the organisation's other potential members as anything other than the pilots of one, two and three. Never Scott and Virgil, definitely never Alan.

"Whatever you say, boss," Gordon files the handbook away for future study. "Hey, how did the meeting go?"

It's always fun to watch John squirm. "It went okay."

That first night, after they had agreed, that yes, they both really wanted to do this, no matter what Scott said, no matter what _Dad_ said, they had stayed up all night cataloguing Gordon, his strengths, his weaknesses, his current assets, projects and flaws. It had been an excruciating night.

John's reciprocal self-assessment had come two nights later. It had taken some cajoling because John had insisted "I already know my flaws", and it had been almost as awful for Gordon as his own audit. He had always known big brother was accomplished but seeing _all_ his achievements listed together was just depressing.

But looking past that, Gordon had quickly seen what John seemed to be blind to, that John's supervisor and his fellow researchers at the Polar Centre were taking _mondo_ advantage of him. With much pushing, John had finally confronted his supervisor today."

"I've told him that I'm off-loading the extra project work back to Glynne and Ditmas, that I'll continue to work in an advisory capacity but I'm done doing any data collection for them."

"Good."

"And he's agreed he's going to let me shuttle home two days in twenty for flight and sim training. Also, I've asked him to move my thesis defence up to June."

"Seriously? With all that other stuff you've got to do?"

"I think with the extra work off my back I should be finished in time."

"Rather you than me, John."

He removes his jacket and tosses it up on the hammock behind him. He had strung it up a couple of days ago. It's not that he's sleeping here, or anything, that would be against regulations, but sometimes Phones needs him, like three nights ago when he'd sent him that emergency message at two AM and Gordon had come down from quarters to find him lying trapped between the toilet and the sink. He had picked him up and helped him back to his bunk, helped bandage the bleeding cut over his left eye and cleaned up the piss on the floor. The lieutenant had just kept repeating over and over, "Sorry, Coop, sorry. Temp couldn't come. Sorry, Coop."

And Phones doesn't seem to mind that he's put up the hammock and moved a few things down here, just for convenience sake. It's a nice spot to do his reading in anyway. He's got a lot of reading to do, thanks to John.

"You ready for tonight?" he asks John.

John gives another long suffering sigh. "I'm just going to say again, for the record, I think the best solution to this problem would be for you to develop a brief bout of norovirus. A saline solution mixed with soda flakes would cause you to vomit in a realistic–"

Gordon utters his most sinister laugh. "Okay, one, I can't believe you're telling me how to fake being sick. Two, I'm not drinking soda flakes, and three, if I fake norovirus now then how am I going to fake it next time there's something I actually don't want to go to? Besides, we've got to try this sooner or later, right?"

"This?"

"Us. Team Tracy. Ugh, we really need a better name. _The T Team. The Badasses. The Fly (And swim) By Night's."_

"We're not an indie garage band, Gordon. And this is not our specialty, not either of our specialities."

"But it's a good preliminary test. Come on, John. A good system is founded on beta-testing. And it'll be fun."

"Fine. In that case you better hit the showers. We're on a schedule."

Exactly 85 minutes later – he knows because John counts – he's standing in the corner of the Seriously Salmon ballroom, trying to blend in.

Twice a year, WASP holds a grand gala at the Conch and invites investors and dignitaries from around the world. By tradition, cadets are expected to serve at the gala, handing out drinks and canapes, which is why Gordon is here tonight, scratching at the neck of his dress uniform, trying not to get caught eating the shrimp tails in bacon off his silver platter and more importantly trying not to get ID-ed by some industrialist or ex-astronaut with a knack for faces.

The other reason he's here is to see if they can work, just him and John, without Virgil the human insulating tape lying between them to stop them sparking off each other, without Scott the lightning rod, drawing fire. It's a test run to see what it's like for him to manage a situation with John in his ear, for John to have to direct him from afar, direct him at all. They've got to know if they're going to be able to do this or the whole show falls apart.

That's why he's got a tiny plastic receiver in his left ear, a glob of transmission gum stuck to his hard palette and a microcam tucked into his button hole.

"At your two o'clock the Dean of Marine Sciences at MIT is talking to Admiral Colchester. Neither of them have a reason to know you. Should be safe."  
"Understood," Gordon murmurs and makes a beeline for the Admiral's group.

"Shrimp, Ma'am? Shrimp, Admiral? It's our finest."

"Now turn 45 degrees, I want to catalogue the group in the north quarter of the room."

"Mm-hmm." He turns slowly, careful not to bump into cadet Schooley with his platter of crab cakes. "Where did you say you got this spy this again?"

"My roommate at MIT. He designed them. The US army offered him a huge contract for the patent."

"So this is army grade stuff?"

"Not exactly. Elrond's an anarchist. He wouldn't sell. He tells me he mostly uses it to coach frat pledges through talking to girls. Don't touch your ear."  
"I'm not," says Gordon, quickly lowering his hand, making another pass at handing around his platter to a group John has designated safe. "Where next?"

"Make your way towards the stage and – Left! Left! Right now."

John's shout in his ear is deafening. It causes Gordon to swerve and almost drop his tray. Half the remaining shrimp are airborne. He ducks behind a palm tree. "What? What?!"

"At your ten."

Gordon lifts a palm frond. The first thing he sees is a perfectly formed blonde in a lavender gown, chatting to Captain Tempest.

"Yep, Johnny. I approve. You've got good taste."

"Grow up, Cooper." He can hear the barely checked irritation in John's voice. "Beside her."

The blonde lightly touches the arm of a fair-haired man with a narrow moustache and impeccable bearing.

"Yeah, I see him."

"That's Lord Hugh Creighton Ward. He's an old friend of Dad's. You need to avoid him at all costs."

"You think he could ID me?"

"Highly possible. He's met all five of us personally on multiple occasions. _You've_ even been to his country estate."

This rings faint bells for Gordon, not all together pleasant ones. He peers at the knockout in lavender. "Wait, did he have a kid? A girl."

"Yes. One daughter, Penelope. Currently in her last year at Oxford." He pretends he is imagining the trickle of amusement in John's voice. "I think she was the one –"

"She was a hoity-toity little princess, and I don't know what you're talking about." Gordon says quickly. "Okay, two high risk targets. I'll avoid."

"Also steer clear of Admiral Teiu, blue uniform at your seven o'clock. You two have never met in person, but you beat his former boyfriend Tomasu Sato in your heat at the World Championships last year."

"Roger." He takes another peek at Penelope Creighton-Ward. She certainly is a looker – if you know, you like that frosty British princess thing, which he doesn't.

"And Cooper…"

Someone clears her voice loudly right in Gordon's other ear. With a sinking feeling he turns to find himself being eyeballed coldly.

"Watch out for Rear Admiral Shore."

Rear Admiral Shore is the Conch's acting commander of operations and has a reputation as a premier league ball buster. She's a redhead too, his life seems chock full of them lately. She's giving him that hard look. "Do we think we are a monitor lizard, Cadet?"

"No, Admiral."

"A type of exotic newt?"

"No, Ma'am."

"Then kindly stop examining the shrubbery and get back to your post."

"Yes, Admiral." He looks down at his almost empty platter. "Just going to restock, ma'am."

"Then do so."

He makes for the kitchen and can feel her gimlet eye on him the entire time.  
He picks up a fresh platter of shrimp at the pass and is hurrying back to the ballroom when he hears the sounds of someone sobbing. He pauses.

"You picking that up?" he asks.

"Someone's crying." John's voice is flat. "A girl."

"Nothing gets past you. I'm going to go check it out. She may be a damsel in distress." He starts to hum 'The Boys are Back in Town' – that was on the playlist – and follows the sound of the crying. The acoustics in the access corridors amplifies the noise, and he is able to follow it right back to its source.

There's a girl huddled in a corner outside a utilities closet, sobbing. With a lurch of his heart he realises it's Red. He stops humming.

"Cooper, you're going to be missed if you don't get back," John, as usual, has the emotional sensitivity of a ball bearing.

"Give me a minute."

"Cooper, seriously."

Red raises her head when she sees him coming and quickly tries to ring out her eyes, pretend like she hasn't been crying. "Hi… sorry… I was just…" She gives a wet sniff and slides up the wall. "I was taking five."

"You okay? Did something happen?"

"No. I'm fine." She snatches up her tray of champagne flutes. "I've got to get back. These won't serve themselves, so…"

"Hey," he coaxes her. "Hey, it's okay. You can tell me. We're friends right?"

"Are we?" Her lip trembles

"Sure, think of all those long minutes spent in access corridors together. And here we are again, in an access corridor. Must be fate, right?"  
This gets a watery chuckle from her.

"I can't believe you're flirting right now," says John in his ear.

"Shut up."

"What?" Red blinks at him, taken aback.

"Oh, uh, nothing. Are you okay?" he asks her again. "Did something happen."

The lip tremble is back again. "I'm fine. It's just… It's just…"  
And then suddenly she's crying again, trying to hold it in, failing miserably. Her shoulders shake in great, noisy, hiccupy sobs.

"Oh great," mutters John. "You broke her."

"It's Rear Admiral Shore. She's just so… so mean." She covers her mouth if this is a truth too awful to contemplate. "I'm sorry."

Gordon grins. "Can't fault you for the truth, you know."

"'She said I was a disgrace, 'coz I couldn't do my job, just because I broke one stupid glass. She said… she said that if that was my attitude then maybe I wasn't cut out for WASP." She begins to sob again.

"Hey," he puts his arm on her shoulder. "Hey, come on. It's okay. She doesn't know what she's talking about. She's a grade A bitch."

"But she's Commander of the Conch. And she's Commander Shore's daughter. She'll have me drummed out of WASP. And it's only my first day."

"No she won't. Don't worry. You know what I think? I think Rear Admiral Shore could do with a lesson in manners." He grins.

John's already nagging in his ear. "Gordon, I mean Cooper, under no circumstances, under no circumstances are you to do what I think you're thinking."

But Red is looking at him as if this is the most audacious, terrifying thing she's ever heard. "You don't mean… you don't mean playing a trick on Rear Admiral Shore, do you?"

"No. He doesn't mean that. You definitely do not mean that. Gordon!"

"But that's nutso," she says. "They'll put us in the clink. Or they'll discharge us."

Gordon turns the wattage on his grin all the way up to eleven. "Only if we get caught."

* * *

"Gordon, you cannot do this. You cannot do this. You're jeopardising everything you worked for to impress some girl."

Gordon pulls the receiver out of his ear and deposits it in a particularly unloved platter of lobster mousse.

He looks around the room with the jaundiced eye of a professional. There's not enough time to pull an Uncle Bumbly, and a Bourke and Hare would only get him court-marshalled. He could try a Mary Jane but it's unlikely he'll be able to get his hands on a gallon of cold mushroom soup and an emu at such short notice. Damn.

Red comes to stand beside him. "What are we going to do?" she asks. Her elbow, the one holding the tray, brushes his sleeve. In that one spot he can feel heat like a miniature sun.

"Something," he says. "Definitely something."

Rear Admiral Shore is crossing the room, hand outstretched, to greet a tiny woman surrounded by a phalanx of very big sturdy men.

"That's Baroness Keeling, the British Military Consul," says Red. "I heard the chefs inside talking about her."

That's when inspiration strikes. Gordon grins. "We're going to pull a Shirley Temple."

It's a delicate twostep of timing and precision, a Jacob's ladder where everyone needs to seem to move perfectly without actually moving at all. He jostles and nudges and carefully guides the necessary pieces around the room, and just has to hope that none of them will turn around and say,

"Gordon Tracy. What are you doing here? You know, your Dad absolutely screwed me over during our last contract negotiation."

He wrangles a couple of Lieutenants, move a celebrity physicist or two back a couple of steps with a well-placed tray of mimosas and then, when everything is lined up perfectly, he taps an Indian general on the shoulder and says smartly, "Excuse me, Admiral Charleston. I have a message for you, Sir, from your wife."

"I am not Admiral Charleston," says the general, turning away. But it's already too late, because a professor of linguistics has moved out of the way of his elbow, causing her to jostle the hand of the cadet behind her, who just manages to save his tray, but bumps into the senior waiter just behind him.  
Like dominos the pieces fall, a thrill running through the room as the chain reaction winds its way towards Admiral Shore and the consul. Gordon buttons his grin again, and slips through the crowds, so he can get a better view.

The consul is handing over a silver thumb drive to Admiral Shore, and the attention of her entire bodyguard is on the exchange, so none of them notice the frission in the room. Gordon has time to wonder what's on the thumb drive, to consider that maybe this is a bad idea, when the apogee of the reaction hits.

Admiral Roman, over-reaching for his drink, because his waiter's jacket has snagged on a Captain's ceremonial sword, stumbles forward, tries to reach out for a table he was leaning on, only to find it's been tweaked six inches to his left, and stumbles into the Rear Admiral, who is pushed forward and spills her entire drink onto the head of the British Consul.

She tries to backpedal, wipe it off, looking around for someone to blame, just as Captain Tempest, sits down on the buffet table, carefully sabotaged by Red, and an entire basin of boulabaisse into the air and rain over Admiral Shore and the consul.

The phlanax take most of the fire for the consul, but the Admiral is drenched from head to toe. The Consul squeals. "This is Vintage Westwood!"

Gordon looks around for his partner in crime, and to his alarm sees she has waded into the middle of the mess. Not the plan. Not the plan at all.  
He deposits his tray on a table and pushes through the crowd to reach them.

The plan was a distant sniping. No direct contact, but now Red is trying to wipe the Admiral's face with a pilfered table cloth as the consul shrieks.

In his rush Gordon bumps headlong into someone. It's the girl in the lavender dress, Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward. She gives him a cool, penetrating look and for a second he's got that heart-stopping feeling that he's been rumbled. "Pardon me, your Ladyship." He hurries on.

A comedy pratfall gets him into the heart of the mess. Two bodyguards go to grab him, and it's hardly his fault when this only leads to them bumping heads, and sending more off the buffet into orbit, to rain down softly on surrounding guests.

He seizes Red. "With your permission, Admiral. We'll get some towels so we can clean up."

He doesn't wait for an answer. Red allows him to take her hand and a moment later they're out of there and hurrying across the ballroom floor. He pulls her towards the main door.

Just as he reaches the door his gaze falls on one of the security monitors. The screen flashes blue and then a photo is thrown up on the monitor.

It's a grainy still shot, blurred by motion artifact. His own foot is visible in it and so is a bodyguard's meaty bicep. It appears to have been taken while he was on the floor. It must have been pulled directly off Gordon's microcam, still nestled in his buttonhole. Below the time stamp are the initials JGT.

It's gone before he can even begin to register that it's real, but it clearly shows Red, palming a thumb drive. The same thumb drive the consul had just handed to Rear Admiral Shore.

Oh no.

Right at the same moment the muted strains of Pacobel's Canon are replaced by Nick Jonas singing " _Stars"_ at glass shattering volume, from the live recording of the 50th Anniversary performance of _Les Miserables_.  
Gordon knows the song too well, has heard it enough times. It's the one album Dad has absolutely banned from being played in the house. Even a couple of bars is enough to plunge Virgil into a fugue of gloom and Symphony No. 5 for days. Inez Lin, head of the drama club, for whom Virgil had pined, longed and learned the entire part of Javert, had dumped him for Jean Valjean on opening night. He has never gotten over it.

"Virgil, you're sweet," she had told him as his entire family watched, "And you've a great baritone and I knew I'd never get you up on stage if you didn't think I liked you back."

Gordon's heart drops. He knows exactly what John's trying to tell him. "Okay, Johnny," He says as the sound engineer gets things back under control. "I get the picture."

He follows Red out into the corridor and lets them get far enough away from the ballroom before he catches her arm. "Hold up a second."

She turns and beams at him, a smile that could melt his heart. He steadies himself. "That was wicked. You're a pro, Coop. When you – And she – Mint!"

 _Careful. Careful_. "Thanks," he says, reaches into the pocket of her dress uniform and removes the thumb drive.

"Heyyy…" She trails off when she sees what he's got.

"What the hell is this?" he says, all business. "This is classified, important stuff. Did you steal this?"

Her eyes drop to the floor. Her shoulders drop too. She looks devastated. "Yah. No. Maybe. I dunno. It was just there, right? Admiral Shore dropped it, and she made me so gawdam mad and I thought, well what's the harm, right? Maybe she loses it for a while. Maybe she learns her lesson."

"Or maybe she puts the whole place in lockdown, there's a diplomatic incident and we're both arrested." He pockets the drive. "I mean we don't know what's on this. It could be serious shit."

There's that lip tremble again. "'msorry. I didn't think. I'm so stupid."

"We've got to put this back now. You know that, right?"

She gives a small, troubled nod. "I'm so sorry. You've been so nice and kind and now I'm gonna get you in trouble. And all you ever did was try to help me. And I never even thanked you properly. Oh Cooper!"

She flings herself into his arms, trembling like a leaf.

She's warm and soft and tiny, one of his arms could go around her entire body, no problem. And she turns her face up to him and looks at him with those eyes…

And suddenly he's thinking about Marsha Dansk who had kissed him in front of ten thousand people after she won her heat at nationals and Kaitlyn O'Keeffe who had bits of purple gummy bears wedged into her train tracks, and Sarah Whatshername, whom he had been so sure was crushing on Virgil until the moment she dragged him into that coat closet and…

…And what is he doing thinking about all of them when this girl is in his arms right here, right now and she's warm and tender and looking at him like… like…?

…Like he's the biggest idiot who has ever lived.

With a dull _clunk_ the handcuffs go around the utility pipe behind his head. He didn't even notice them going around his wrist. She gives him a soft peck on the cheek even as her left hand reaches into his pocket and fishes out the thumb drive.

"Hey!"

With his free hand he swipes at her, but she darts nimbly out of his reach.

"It's been tremendous fun, darling, but I really do have to go," she says, in a voice that's not the least bit uncertain, or, for that matter, even the slightest bit Bostonian. Her vowels are suddenly pure cut glass.

Oh shit.

"Oh shit."

"Language, sweetheart." She taps him on the nose with the tip of her index finger. "What would your mother say?"

He jangles the cuffs as he tries to make a grab for her, to rip free of the wall. _Anything_. But she's too quick and the cuffs are the standard issue, heavy-duty carbon used for prisoner transfer. She must have swiped them off one of the security agents. "I'm gonna–! Lemme go!"

"Love to, but I've got a boat to catch and I really must dash. Thanks ever so much for your help." She gives him a little wave and darts away.

"Hey! **Hey!** "

He hangs against the wall, thumps his fist against his forehead a couple of times because he's a total patsy and he deserves it, then tries to think what to do. Goddamit, why hadn't he listened to John? God, he was going to be unbearable after this.

There's a security hub halfway down the corridor, but for his purposes right now it might as well be on the dark side of the moon. The useless things don't even have voice recognition. He could yell for help, rouse whatever security force is around, and, well, good luck explaining why you're tied to a pipe, _Cadet Waverly._

He thinks about knocking out a message on the pipe in Morse code. The utility pipes go everywhere. There's a good chance they could transmit the sound pretty far and that Phones might hear.

But as nice a guy as Phones is, and as much as he likes Gordon, if he busts him having committed _actual espionage_ he is going to report him up the chain.

"Goddammit. Johnny, if you can hear me, I'm sorry and you were right and you are awesome and I'll never not listen to you again, and if there's anything you can do to get me out of here, I would really, _really_ appreciate it."

There's silence, but Gordon can't help but feel it's a pointed sort of silence, the silence of a raised eyebrow.

Then the security hub, in tinny, bleeping tones, begins to crank out a musak version of _Wouldn't it Be Nice_ by the _Beach Boy_ s.

"Ho. Ho. You're such a comedian."

But then it dawn on him what John's trying to say. Lock picking was never a formal part of Gordon's education, but when you've got an older brother who insists on locking away his game console, and his camera and his vintage record collection, just because you used _Pet Sounds_ as a Frisbee one time when you were 11, learning to pick a lock becomes a handy skill to have in your back pocket.

And because Virgil is a devious bastard whose idea of fun it is to construct harder and harder locks just to see if you can break them, he had had to upskill quickly. There's been a padlock with perpendicular magnetic tumblers hanging off his bathroom door for nine months now. It seals a toy plastic egg in which are the twenty bucks Virg bet him that he couldn't open it. It's a twenty bucks he's planning to win.

He examines the lock on the cuffs with a practiced eye. It's a standard double lock with a detente. Doable, with the right set of tools. The only problem is…

"Navel cadets don't usually carry lock picks on our person, Johnny."

A moment, and then the tune being piped from the comm unit switches to _The Flight of the Bumblebee._

"Very funn –Oh!"

Because there's a black and gold buttonhole tucked into his dress uniform, the same buttonhole he had carefully wrapped up in wire to make doubly sure his micro-cam doesn't fall out.

"John, you're kind of a genius."

He pulls the microcam out first and tucks the slender wand behind his ear, so his brother can have a good view. Then using his free hand and his teeth he begins to unwrap the wire and bend it into a makeshift tension wrench.

* * *

"'Scuse me, coming through. 'Scuse me."

He runs through the dawn tinted corridors of the conch, every door sliding open ahead of him as John digs into WASP's systems.

Cooper Waverly knows very little about spy shit. But he does know a little about tides. And Gordon Cooper, his grandma's best student, knows a lot about bluffing. The Conch can only be reached by boat at certain specific times. It was built that way.

He makes for the helipad.

He bumps and shoves his way through a crowd of annoyed servicemen.

"'Scuse me. Move please. We've pinpointed the… er… the Bermuda Triangle. I must inform Captain Tempest at once."

"Didn't we find that already?" He hears a corporal murmur as he runs past.

He finds her in one of the access corridors just off the helipad, disposing of her uniform down a recycling chute. She's changed into a fitted grey dress, with one of those neat little white collars that makes her look all demure and schoolgirly, and okay, if he's being honest with himself, also kind of amazing. _But that is not the point._

"Hey, you. Freeze!" _Hee, awesome._

But she only smirks and looks him up and down. "You're more resourceful than I gave you credit for. How interesting." She raises one eyebrow. "And who's your friend?"

He touches his ear where John's wand is sitting. " _My friend_ has been filming your every antic. Lift one finger and he'll post the footage to the web for everyone to see. He'll bring the entire security force down on your head." He has no idea if John can do this. If his powers are limited to playing tinned versions of popular musicals and twentieth century pop hits. But it sounds good. "You're going to give me back that disk." He jabs a finger at her.  
With a small frown, she steps back from him. He makes a lunge for her, grabbing her elbow.

 _And, oh come on!_

He is _an athlete_. He was going to _The Olympics._ He can bench press three hundred pounds. He can do four hundreds squats without stopping. She's maybe ninety pounds soaking wet and he could swallow both her hands in one of his. So how come he's the one who suddenly finds himself with his face smooshed against the wall?

"Now you really are going to have to calm down." And it's so unfair, because her voice is cool and treacherous and totally infuriating so why is it still the sexiest thing he's ever heard in his life? "Or I'll have to put you to sleep."

"MMMPH!? Mmmph-mmph?"

He can almost hear the eye roll in her voice. "Not remotely what I meant. Now, I'm going to ease up a little, be a good boy and don't scream."

The pressure eases off, at least enough that he can get his tongue out from between his teeth. "You can't take that disk!"

"Can't I? What are you going to do about it?" Her fingers play with his hair.

"I…I'm gonna…"

"If I could make a suggestion," she says, "You could scream. Deputy

Commander Roman and his personal guard are less than thirty metres down that corridor. If you shout they'll hear you. You could raise the alarm. Cause a major diplomatic incident. Save the day. Be the hero of the hour. And I'm sure when everything is settled down your seniors will turn to each other and say, 'we should commend this brave cadet. Just who is this _Cooper Waverly_?'"

Ah. Crap.

"Or, you could let me go about my business and you can go about yours and no one has to be any the wiser. Doesn't that sound like something that might be more beneficial to us both?"

He nods.

"Very sensible." She eases up a little more.

He sucks in a deep breath. "Hey! Help! Over he-"

She dings his head so hard against the wall that his _thoughts_ ring and he's not even sure if he just imagines her saying, "A brain and a conscience, what am I going to do with you two?"

There's a quiet moment. A perfectly manicured finger taps the wall to his left. "Alright, junior-"

 _"Mmf-mu?!"_

"New deal. I will return the disk to you and in return you and _your friend_ will let me waltz right out of here. No harm. No fuss. What do you think?"

He growls and tries to shake her off. "Why should I believe you?"

"This is a limited time offer, darling. Otherwise you're going down the rubbish chute in three, two, one…" She dangles the disk in front of his nose.

He nods and she eases up again, holds the disk out in an open palm.

He snatches it and stuffs it back into his jacket pocket. "You're crazy, lady."

"And you're a little bit brave. And more moral than I gave you credit for. Who are you, _really?_ "

"Like I'd tell you!" He blurts and knows from her widening smile that this is the wrong answer.

"I think you mean, 'I'm Cooper Waverly, WASP cadet, Ma'am,' Don't you?'"

"Right. Yeah." His head is pounding. What he wants right now is to be as far away as possible, to be back in the archive eating kelp noodles and getting chewed out by John. He tries to back away, but her hand slips through his.

"I don't think so. You're going to escort me out. It wouldn't do for a lady to be wandering around WASP unaccompanied."

"Forget-"

Her grip is reinforced iridium. "Think what mischief she might get up to. And I want to make sure you don't try anymore funny business. Come along, Cadet. It's only proper." She leads him down the corridor her arm linked in his. Her fingers stroke is sleeve.

He glowers at her.

"Oh do lighten up," she's smiling at him from under lowered lashes. "It's fun."

"Oh yeah, it's real fun."

A pair of soldiers pass them in the corridor and nod politely at her. She smiles back. "Don't you want to know what's on the disk?"

"No."

She laughs again and he glares at her. "You're a little bit sensitive, aren't you?" Her finger strokes the ball of his thumb.

"Hey, knock it off."

She laughs. "It's just a game, you know. WASP want a piece of intelligence that the British Government have and the British Government is of course only delighted to provide it to WASP. If WASP were to _lose_ that piece of information once it is in their possession, well the British government can't be held accountable for that, can they?"

"You expect me to believe that you tried to steal back your own intelligence? So WASP couldn't have it?"

"Or so WASP would have to ask again and owe us a favour. It is a game of favours."

"Like I'm going to believe– "

Except… Except Hugh Creighton-Ward. Well-heeled. Seasoned diplomat. Above suspicion.

 _Dad's friend._

 _Oh._

So this girl works for Lord Creighton Ward?

But suddenly he's struck by a memory so strongly that he stops dead, pulling her out of step too. Limpid blue eyes, a perfectly pressed pink and gold dress, and a visit to the country that had ended with him somehow being blamed for pushing someone's Nanny in the duck pond and eating an entire chocolate cake.

 _Oh_.

"You! You're - But that girl with him at the party-" He's blurting again.

She's entirely unfazed. "Oh, that's Danielle, my father's secretary. She's my Sydney Carton. Or rather, I hope I am Sydney."

"You hope you're going to get your head chopped off? Me too!"

This delights her. "We look enough alike to confuse matters. Obfuscation is key. Plausible deniability. Maybe it was me who was with my father. Then again, maybe it was Danielle." Those perfect lips turn up in a smile. "Who can say? But I hope you're happy," she says. "Now it means Scotland for the summer with Aunt Constance and dreadful Cousin Reggie following me about and trying to show me his antler collection." She shudders.

"That must be so difficult for you." He shakes his head. "This is crazy. What sort of a Dad is okay with their kid being a… deceitful… manipulative… spy… manipulator…person?" Oh God.

Her lips purse for a moment. Then she laughs. "Of course he's not okay with it. He'd rather I went into fashion or publishing or some other equally tedious occupation. But he'd rather deal with the daughter he has and make sure she's safe and good at her job then waste his time wishing for the daughter he doesn't. What is it?"

He's stopped again and _goddammit_ because he's not going to learn anything from this lying, deceitful, chocolate cake eating polecat, except possibly, that redheads are not to be trusted.

They've reached the door to the helipad. This time she's the one to stop. She laughs. "Why, I almost forgot."

She reaches up and with a shake of her head the red hair comes away. A kinetic tangle of long blonde curls tumble to her shoulders, catching the light like a cornfield in summer.

This is…

This is…

 _So not fair._

The wig is cast aside as swiftly as Cooper Waverly's obsession with redheads. "Come along." She leads him outside.

The wind is up on the helipad and it leaves Gordon feeling cold and exposed, but not as exposed as the gaze of the man watching him from halfway across the tarmac. There's a dozen people on the helipad, including Rear Admiral Shore and half a dozen WASP top brass, but it's the dapper man with his foot half poised on the step leading to the RAF tigerfly that pulls Gordon's attention. Lord Creighton-Ward is a smaller man than Gordon's father and his fair hair is only just starting to fade to grey. Still, Gordon is reminded immediately of Dad.

Red must sense his hesitation, the sudden lead weight in his steps, because she glances over at him and squeezes his arm. "It really is alright. I won't give you away."

Gordon gives a tight nod. He is trying think himself into the role of Cooper Waverly. To be that guy, obedient, humourless, dull, the ideal WASP candidate. To be forgettable. It's been years since he last met Lord Creighton Ward, not since he was an acne pocked, hyperactive tween. There's no reason his Lordship would have reason to remember him. _Just brazen it out. It'll be okay._

"Darling, we've been waiting."

"Sorry, Papa," Red looks contrite. "I'm afraid I wanted to see the aquarium and I got all turned around. This is Cadet Cooper Waverly, Papa. He was kind enough to escort me."

"Good afternoon, _Cadet Waverly_ ," Lord Creighton-Ward holds out a hand and without missing a beat he adds, "And congratulations on your recent victory. A national gold medal, wasn't it?"

Okay, so much for brazening it out then.

Rather than taking his hand, Gordon salutes. "Thank you, Sir." He is at least given the satisfaction of seeing a fleeting moment of puzzlement crease Red's dark brows.

"Shall I send your regards to your father when I see him next?" asks Lord Creighton Ward.

"I'd rather you didn't, Sir."

What Lord Creighton Ward thinks about this is totally impossible to gauge because he immediately turns to Red, "Penny, we really must go. We need to be in Washington by six."

"Yes, Papa."

Red – Penny – whatever – turns to face him, and – he can hardly credit it – actually blushes. "Thank you _so much_ , Cadet Waverly," she gushes.

"Yes Ma'am," says Cooper Waverly under the watchful gaze of his superiors.

"Just doing my duty, Ma'am."

"Well, goodbye." She turns towards her father and then stops, turns back and with all the giddiness and impulsiveness of a young girl with a crush on a man in uniform, she throws her arms around him in a quick embrace.

He doesn't feel her hand slip into his inner pocket and remove the disk. But, well, he's not an idiot.

"Hey!" But everyone is watching. His jaw clicks shut.

She flashes a wicked smile that's just for him and then becomes the soul of demure embarrassment. "I'm sorry," she tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear as she turns to Gordon's superior. "Thank you for your hospitality, Admiral Roman."

Then she steps lightly onto the chopper. The WASP officers are already turning away, losing interest. Cadet Waverly remains standing to attention on the helipad, waiting to be dismissed.

It's all Gordon Tracy who runs forward as close as the corona of moving blades will let him, and yells "Hey, Lady Penelope!"

She's already seated, legs delicately crossed at the ankle. She's not looking at him and the whirring blades slice his words to pieces and in a second she's going to be snatched away and that'll be it.

But then she looks up and her eyes find his. She mouths something at him. Maybe, "See you next time." Maybe not.

There's no smiling at WASP, he does so anyway.

* * *

True to form, Johnny spends the next half hour chewing him out. "You dumped your earpiece! Into a salmon mousse platter!"

"It was lobster. And I got it back." He had too, though he had almost swallowed the thing sucking the mousseline de honard off its shell. "And I think for our first run, it wasn't too bad. I think I'd give us an eight out of ten."  
"Eight out of ten? You actively assisted in the theft of state secrets. We could be both had up for treason." It's fun to wind John up.

"Yeah, but we almost got them back, we only lost them at the very last minute. That's why I'm deducting a point. Also one for your choice of music."

"I hate you."

Gordon beams. "I know, right? But…"

"But what?"

"But it went okay, right? We're still good? You and me? We're still on. We're still doing this, right? Right."

"No." says John. "Absolutely not. Categorically not. It's a crazy unworkable idea, and we're done."

"Oh."

"Also," he sighs. "I think we're going to have to talk to Dad about hiring someone to look after the espionage side of things. It's really not something any of us are cut out for."


	9. The Pilot - L'Appel du Vide

**_In which a young man with no name goes into the desert alone_**

 _There's a gun in his hand._

There's a gun in his hand and he doesn't know how it got there.

Yes, he does. He does. Calm down. Because they're looking. They're looking at you.

It feels smooth and heavy in the hollow of his hand, like it weighs much more than it should. There's an authority behind a gun like none other.

He hates guns.

 _"How can you hate guns? You're a soldier."_

 _"How can you hate guns? You're the best shot in the unit."_

It's just a tool, he tells himself. And the gesture of taking it has no significance except the weight he gives it.

Weight.

He hates guns.

No. Wrong. He's got it wrong again. Scott Tracy hated guns, but he left Scott Tracy behind in Algiers.

 _He's not Scott Tracy._

 _I'm not Scott Tracy._

 _Who are you trying to kid, kid?_

"Don't try to be him," the Old Man had advised. "Don't _pretend_ to be him. Don't pretend at all. Be him. Dream his dreams. Think his thoughts. That's the trick. Let the person you were be ashes in the wind."

So really, _really_ , he doesn't even know how he feels about guns.

But he knows that the man who gave him the gun is watching him to see what he will do.

And what he does is check the barrel, check the mag, check the safety. It's a Sig P-220, different from the Glock he's used to. It's a well-used piece, but there are no cracks in the frame, no gouging in the slide rail. The rifling looks sharp.

He shoves the gun into the back of his trousers, covers it over with his shirt like he knows what he's doing.

Because he does.

He's a soldier. He knows what he's doing.

 _What the hell are you doing?_

 _Calm down. Calm down._

Mac nods, seems satisfied. He's a big man, nearly as tall as he is and twice as broad. His face and arms have been flayed a permanent red by years in the sun, and what was once probably an Irish accent has been sanded down by time to a Mid-Atlantic burr. "Let's go."

He grabs his duffle and follows Mac out onto the tarmac. The crew are waiting for them. There are five of them. A comms guy, Mac had said, three mercs and a specialist to look after the cargo.

"What's the cargo?" is the sort of question you don't ask on a job like this.

And it's not like it had kept him awake asking, what if it's guns? What if it's drugs? What if it's a nuke? Scott Tracy may have lain awake in bed last night thinking, _What will I do if it's girls? If it's kids?_ But he's not Scott Tracy.

 _I'm not Scott Tracy._

"One job." The Old Man's voice had been weedling. "There's some cargo I want to move cross border. Taxes being what they are now, I prefer to deliver the savings directly to my consumer. You understand. One job, tedious but certainly not dangerous, and well within your skillset, then I give you the means to disappear. Sound like something you can handle?"

"Who the kid?" One of the women, a wiry Somali, with the hallmarks of a stim junkie, bristles. "Where Burke?"

"Burke's out," says Mac. "We've got the kid."

"No man, Burke the pilot."

"We've got the kid," says Mac.

Now all five of them are looking it him, sizing him up, working him out, deciding then and there that they don't like him much.

"Who is he?" asks the other woman. She's old enough to be in knitting circle with his – Scott's – Gran – if Grandma ever went to knitting circle – but she's got a set of solid gold front teeth and fading Swastika tattoos between her knuckles.

Mac shrugs as if he doesn't know, doesn't care and certainly doesn't care if the crew never find out.

"Young for a merc," says the little guy. He's dressed like an accountant, short-sleeved shirt, paisley tie, comb over, but his fingers twitch constantly like a pair of pale spiders.

"Army brat," the big German says. His partner nods and hawks onto the tarmac.

He knows how obvious it is. His hair will grow out, but his posture, his bearing, the way he moves, all of it, scream military. Now that he's somebody else he's going to have to relearn how to walk, how to talk, how to be.

 _"Hey, Team America: World Police, slouch a little. Today you're just a mall-rat like the rest of us, remember?"_

It's Gordon – _why has it got to be Gordon?_ – that he hears in his head. It stirs up the memories of last summer, of sloping around Miami in board shorts and a baseball cap, looking for parts for Alan's solar sailor and for the perfect Cubano.

 _Don't think of that. Don't think of that now._

"You fly, kidney bean?" The woman's up in his face now. "You fly that?"

The equipment's on the tarmac behind them. Gunderson would call it a piece of–

 _Don't._

Stubbs would say that she would never get in –

 _I said, don't._

Even Virgil might be roused to call it -

 _Stop._

"Hah?" He's half a foot taller than she is and she's got to stand on tiptoe to wag her finger in his face. Her eyes are red and bloodshot and he can feel her spittle on his face and he's got the gun, but she's got a gun too, and also a machete at her hip and probably concealed weapons he can't see, so he doesn't try to shove her off.

And he doesn't say, _"I can fly anything."_ And he doesn't say. _"I'm the best pilot you've ever seen_ ," and he doesn't say, " _I could fly a brick with wings into hell and back. I can fly your piece of shit, Aeroflot 60 through the eye of a needle."_ Because he's not that guy anymore, can't be that guy, and the person he is now doesn't say things like that.

So instead he says, "Yeah. I can fly it."

"You sure?" Her voice is slippery, insinuating. "No training wheels on it, hah?"

"Efe," for the first time Mac's voice holds the edge of a threat in it, "Knock it off."

Efe just grins and eyeballs him. Her finger jabs into his chest. "Hah?"

"I'm good," he says, meeting her eye for a moment.

"Okay, cowboy." He loses her interest as quickly as he'd captured it. "Kumayo."

Mac jerks his head towards the Aeroflot. "Do what you gotta do."

Alone for the first time since he got up that morning the pilot is able to go through the pre-flight checks in peace. This at least is familiar, the rhythms natural as breathing. The Aeroflot is a cargo plane, bigger and much, much slower than the _Cheetahs_ and _Peregrines_ he – Scott – that guy's – been flying these last eighteen months. But he's taken a _22-May-Cee_ up before and the two should handle alike. He rechecks the weight-fuel calculations. They're hauling three tonnes, which means at least they're not transporting people.

He reviews his course next. It's not much more than a puddle jump really, across Libya and into Egypt. But there will be no ground support and since they will be illegally violating sovereign airspace both Egypt and Libya are well within their rights to shoot them down if they catch them. Mac says the old man has something that will hide them from radar and satellite surveillance, which is good, because if he doesn't this is going to be a very short flight. But even cloaked, getting through will be a risk. Libya's skies run hotter than her deserts. The GDF run a constant drone presence there to deter smugglers. Roaming packs of drones sweep the skies nightly. Last year they caught and captured over two hundred aircraft.

If this were anything else, a training exercise or a war game, it would be shaping up to be fun.

Pre-flight checks complete, he grabs a flashlight to go do the external inspection. He inspects the right wing and the empennage, the cargo door is closed up and whatever is stored in there is sealed up tight. He comes round the tail section and finds Efe smoking a cigarette right under the fuel tank.

"Hey! Are you crazy? You want to blow us all to hell? Put that out, right now." It comes out of his mouth without ever stopping to check in with his brain. It's automatic, that assumption of authority. The Lieutenant expecting to be obeyed. The elder brother scolding the younger.

But it's not some petty officer goofing off where he shouldn't be. And it's not Alan sulking because he got scolded for playing too close to Tracy One's vents. This woman is dangerous.

She smiles at him and shows a set of rotting teeth, smooshes her cigarette underfoot. "Funny boy. What you up to?"

"External inspection. It's standard procedure."

"Burke never did that."

"I'm not Burke."

 _No, you're not._

 _Shut up._

"Get aboard. We depart in six minutes." There seems no other way round it than to bluff his way through.

Her hand goes to her machete, and he can see she's already buzzing from whatever she's on. But then she relaxes, blows him a kiss and stalks towards the front of the aircraft. He continues his inspection, checking the left wing, the nose cone, the engine. Everything _seems_ in order.

Mac leans out the front portal. "Kid…"

"One minute." He turns and runs back to the rear of the plane to the spot where Efe was standing. Using his torch he inspects the fuel inlet. There's no evidence that it has been tampered with. He swings his torch in a ponderous figure-of-eight over the belly of the fuselage.

And finds what he wasn't looking for.

* * *

Take off is unremarkable. They're still in Tunisian territory and the danger is slight until they reach the border.

Mac's a reasonable co-pilot, though the pilot wouldn't trust him to fly solo without the autopilot engaged. The two German mercenaries, Jacob and Gunter are strapped in behind them. The other three are in back. No one expects him to converse, which is good. Mac never says much anyway. Jacob is monitoring the comms while he and Gunter discuss Bayern Munich's upcoming Champion's League Match in soft German.

Thirty klicks out from the border Mac rises to use the washroom. As soon as Mac's gone Gunter tries to get his attention. "Oi! Kinder! Sprechen Sie deutsch?"

His eyes flick around for a moment. "No, sorry. I don't speak Dutch," he says.

He's expecting what happens next so when the next thing out of the German's mouth is, "Deine Mutter geht in der Stadt huren. Eh, fotze?" he keeps his grip loose on the yoke and his face impassive, doesn't look around. Gunter keeps his voice flat, even friendly, gives no outward sign of the insults dripping from between his lips.

"Sorry? What? I don't understand."

The big man shrugs and seems satisfied that he doesn't have the language, carries on his conversation with his partner. "Who is he? GDF? Kid looks like he should still be in his diapers."

"Who cares? Mac says he's here for one job only."

Gunter sighs. "If it comes to it, it's your turn to do the killing. This one looks like he'll squeal like a pig."

As he says this, Mac re-enters the cockpit and clips Gunter about the ear.

"Oi!"

"He speaks German just fine, you dumb shit."

Two sets of eyes drill into the back of his seat and he wonders if that was such a smart move after all. "Coming up on the border now. Strap in, please."

"Why?" asks Gunter, as Mac reseats himself. In this world, seatbelts are something that happen to other people, but he feels he's given fair warning.

"Hang on," he says and drops the nosecone into a steep incline dive, accelerating.

By the time he levels out they're barely a hundred metres up and the speedometer is pushing into the red as they skim over the dunes. He can hear Gunter retch right behind him. Even Mac looks grey. "Kid, what the hell are you–?"

"Gotta cheat the border sensors," he says as he punches it. "They'll scramble fighters if they detect unauthorised traffic. But the aerial sensors can't pick up anything below 150 metres and the ground sensors can't detect anything going faster than 500k an hour."

He's not sure he should be sharing classified info with the smugglers, but he's pretty confident that none of them are going to be replicating this move. It's flathatting of the most reckless, dangerous kind. The kind that gets you grounded for the rest of your career. Longer if you're the seventeen year old son of a wealthy industrialist who caught you taking your kid brother up with you.

It's _so_ much fun.

He accelerates.

They blow past the border. He lets them coast along the ground for a further kilometre, dancing over the dunes like a kite and then takes them up, easing off. "Now find me some drones."

"You _want_ to find drones?" says Gunter.

"Yeah."

They're cruising for another ten minutes when Jacob says, "Drone chatter twenty klicks out. Eleven o'clock." He's listening intently to the comms and he's forgotten to switch into English.

"GDF or local?" The pilot drops into the same language.

"Sounds local. No, wait… I'm picking up a GDF signature. One o'clock."

"Are they swarming?"

"Don't… I don't think so. Looks like a standard d-sweeper search pattern."

"Try to pin down their pattern. I'm going to alter our course. If there's any change in their movements or you think they're starting to swarm, I need to know about it."

A d-sweeper pattern is one of the protocolised sweep patterns standard in most militaries, including the GDF. Each drone will stay within visual contact of its nearest neighbours so that should one drone be lost or drop out of the pattern the others will be alerted immediately. The net expands and contracts based on visibility. On a clear day, a handful of drones can cover a hundred mile radius, with their infra-red tech, night time range isn't much smaller. However, it makes their movement pattern predictable and exploitable.

He knows this not because of any GDF training but because he has – he had – that guy had – a brother with a brain like a buzzsaw, a passion for informatics and a tendency to pick holes in things.

"But Dad," said John, pacing his father's suite. "It's wrong. There are errors. Exploitable, fixable errors."

John hadn't been studying military drone formation. He had written the paper on heuristic search patterns in search and rescue operations. Its military connotations possibly hadn't even occurred to him. As _that guy_ had come through the door of the suite, he had heard him explaining in that calm, patient, quintessentially Johnny way of his that this should be taken to the highest authority.

"I understand that, son." And Dad had looked a little harangued, because John didn't believe in multiple arguments when a single, well thought out, logical and _correct_ argument repeated often enough could win the day so much more effectively. "I'm just saying that perhaps the very _powerful men_ who adopted the search algorithms are not necessarily ready to hear how flawed they are from a sixteen year old undergraduate."

"Well, then they shouldn't be in power."

"Why don't you ask your brother? I bet he has an opinion on this."

And John had turned to him with eyes more hopeful than annoyed and said, "Scott –"

 _Stop._

He has to close his eyes for an instant, fighting the force of the memory. That's not important. That's not the important bit. What matters now is identifying the search pattern in the sentinel drones. "I need whatever you've got, Jacob."

Jacob forwards him the data and he scrutinises it. It looks like a standard diamond search pattern and its sweeping north-east, turning its shoulder away from them. If he wanted to, he could avoid it entirely.

"We should go south," says Jacob.

"Sure," he says and banks in a north-easterly direction.

It takes Jacob twenty seconds to realise what's happening. "He's taking us right into the swarm!"

"It's a functionality problem with the drones, says John in his memory, leaning over discarded plates of room service to construct another grid out of pepper corns. "See, here, here and here, at the corners of the grid are the sentinel drones. Statistically, they're the most likely to pick up the search object in a sweep because they're right on the edge and will make contact with it first. But a sentinel drone is unique in the pattern because it only links to two other drones rather than the usual three or four. That's a vulnerability."

He hears the definite click of Mac releasing the safety on is gun. He doesn't look around. "If this doesn't work we're going to need to get out of here fast. I'm the only one who can do that. So you might want to shoot me later." There's that mouth-brain thing again, but he doesn't have time to deal with threats right now, because his scanners tell him he's coming up on the drones. "Hold on." He accelerates.

On his scanners the drones move like a flock of birds. He keeps one eye on the pattern, judging velocity and distance. In is head he's counting down. Five… four… three… two… one…

He decelerates hard to just above stall speed just as the sentinel drone comes over the horizon. He drops into formation with it, matching speed.

 _Let's see if you're right, John._

A burst of drone chatter comes over the radio and then there's silence. The drone flies on. He follows.

"It thinks we're one of them," says Jacob, stunned.

"It's a bug in the system," he says, shrugging, as if this is something he does all the time. "If you match trajectory with a sentinel drone it will register you as a drone. And it'll pass our metrics back to the rest of the pack. They won't be able to see us as anything but a drone now." He switches into autopilot, setting to match the swarm's trajectory.

There's another soft click, as Mac puts his gun away. "Nice work."

"He _is_ better than Burke," Jacob mutters to Gunter, in atrociously accented Russian.

"I speak that too, you know." he sighs.

The rest of the journey across Libya is simple. They hitch a ride with the cluster of drones as it sweeps across the desert like a flock of geese.

Over the Mediterranean coast the pilot jettisons two of the packages he had brought with him in his duffel. They'll play a vital part in the next part of the flight. Then he removes the thing he had scraped off the plane's outer fuselage from his pocket.

It's a lump of grey polymer as wide as his handspan, a miniature transponder imbedded in its substance. He had found it stuck to the fuel tank like an oversized barnacle. It can only be a tracker.

He weighs it in his hand for a moment, deciding what to do, then jettisons it as well. He watches it spiral towards the dust coloured earth for a moment, re-pressurises the cabin and walks back towards the cockpit, not sure if he just did the right thing or not.

They are two hours ahead of schedule when the drones bring them within twenty kilometres of the southern Egyptian border.

The pilot straps back into his seat and switches the autopilot off. This time when he tells the others to strap in, they do so without a word.

Just peeling off from a cluster is not an option. If they break formation now the cluster will notice and could re-categorise them as a target. To break away from the pattern they have to switch the drones into a mode where unpredictable and erratic movements fall within standard operating patterns. That means making them swarm.

He takes a breath and flips the switch on the transmitters he dropped from the aircraft a couple of hundred miles ago. If they survived the fall it will seem like two _cheetahs_ armed with nuclear payloads just made land and are making for Tripoli.

Five seconds later the drones respond. They freeze for a moment and then the orderly pattern shatters and the sky is filled with buzzing black aircraft skimming in every direction.

He hears Gunter bark a hushed "scheisse". He's not wrong.

Drones in swarm mode move like a murmuration of starlings, taking their headings from each other as much as their target. They are programmed to avoid collisions with foreign objects, but since they now assume that the Aeroflot is a part of the cluster, they won't engage those precautions. He's not going to be able to decode the drone chatter fast enough to use it to navigate either.

He sets the Aeroflot to climb as hard as it can, ducking and weaving as he flies against the tide of the storm. A black body slides three feet above his left wing and only a reckless dive saves them from a crash.

The drones pay them absolutely no mind, too excited by the _cheetahs._ One more roll and they are clear of the swarm and flying in open skies. Safe.

He doesn't even get a moment to enjoy his slick manoeuvre, because a second later his scanners pick two _somethings_ moving at supersonic speed north north east of them. "Shit."

He alters his course heading south, towards Sudan and drops to a lower altitude, widening his scanner range. Five more supersonic craft ping his scanners.

 _Peregrines_ , the fastest fighters the GDF has in the air. A _peregrine_ could shoot them down and have its pilots back at base enjoying a soda before their wreckage hit the ground. There are only 200 commissioned _peregrines_ , only 300 GDF pilots good enough to fly them – or, well 299 now, he supposes. They can only have come from the GDF base in Turkey, or been catshot from an Aircraft carrier in the Med, which means they're not responding to his beacon, they've been here, waiting.

"Could the GDF know we're coming?"

"No," says Mac.

"Would they care if we were? Because someone seems to care about something. A lot. I'm going to have to take her down. The skies are too hot."

"No."

"They can't pick us with radar but if they get a visual we're dead in the air. How are your clients going to feel if we don't make the rendezvous?"

"Pissed."

"More or less pissed than your boss if the GDF impounds his shipment?"

Mac nods and he takes that as a signal to proceed, begins to search through his terrain maps. "There's an abandoned airfield five miles short of the Sudanese border. We can hide out there."

It's a shit landing. The airfield's decommissioned for twenty years. The concrete's all cracked and torn up, barely dirt in patches. They land hard, juddering to a halt, but intact, and the peris, at least, don't seem interested.

"How long?" asks Mac before he has had time to even unbuckle.

He shakes his head. "I don't know."

He watches the skies. There are not just peregrines up there now, but choppers and sky-nets, a full barricade. Whatever their looking for, the GDF must think it's worth investing a couple of million to find it. His crywolf with the _cheetah_ beacon will only have made matters worse. "Let's get her hidden."

He conceals the plane in the hangar. Little more than an aluminium shed, it's the only structure left standing on the airfield. Then he, Jacob, Efe, Mac and Gunter, go out to the runway and work to conceal evidence of their landing in case of satellite sweeps.

Working with shovel and brush is easy. It means he doesn't have to think. Night is cold in the desert, but he's soon sweating with the effort of covering over the runway with dirt and sand.

Jacob stops and leans on his shovel, wipes sweat off his brow. "You did good, kid," he says, in English. "You know your shit. Sorry 'bout the squealing pig comment before. Gunter runs his mouth sometimes, but we've got no beef with professionals."

He nods, reaches out his hand and Jacob shakes it with a laugh. "You need work, this job is done, you come talk to me, okay?"

"Okay."

"You got a name?"

His silence must stretch too long, because Jacob laughs and says, "Okay Bubi, don't worry. We've all got things we're running from."

* * *

He should sleep, he knows this.

But sleep doesn't come easy in his new life. Doesn't come at all many nights. Wakefulness has to be wrestled into submission, tortured, drowned in scotch and vodka, before sleep will come creeping back.

Doubt waits behind closed eyelids. Doubt, regret and a name he has tried to leave behind.

With the AC turned off the cabin's too hot, and his seat is too small, like trying to sleep on a wire coat hanger. If he stretches out, his limbs splay everywhere, catching on the loose wiring and Mac's iron capped toe. If he tries to curl up, he puts a crick in his neck and his legs ache with pins and needles. Every time he thinks he might be on the verge of sleep he becomes suddenly convinced, _convinced_ that the GDF have found them, that they're bearing down on the airfield.

But when he opens his eyes and lurches for the scanner there they are, blinking dots in standard search formation.

When he can't take it anymore he gives up, grabs the portable unit that links to the main scanner and stumbles from the cockpit.

The lavatory door is locked, and there's a soft grunting coming from within, Jacob and Gunter, misunderstanding the basic concept of the mile high club. He envies them their companionship.

He climbs down from the plane and paces around the hangar. There's a small, dark office, broken windows and a smashed up computer screen. In the corner of the hangar stands an empty shipping container.

He doesn't see the rectangle of moonlight until his shadow crosses it. Looking up, he sees there's a lookout post, just a shelf cut out in the sheets of aluminium a hundred feet up.

The ladder is tucked into the wall, next to a support beam. He puts his foot on one of the lower rungs, and when it seems like it will be able to take his weight, he shoves the scanner into his pocket and begins to climb.

 _"You want to find a missing Tracy boy, you better bring a cherry-picker. Or a magic carpet, eh? Your daddy was just the same when he was your age."_

He swings himself up the rungs of the ladder, hand and foot, the oxidised metal leaving rust coloured welts across his palms and tries not to think of the little boy climbing the old water tower, rustier and much more perilous than the climb ahead of him.

He tries not to think of the sand-coloured dog, running in frantic circles beneath the tower as his master, sweating and swearing under his breath, climbed after the boy.

He tries not to think of a grey head sticking up through the trap door, and a smile through huffs of breath. _"Hey there, kiddo."_

The little boy hadn't been running away, he truly hadn't, because he had promised Mom and his brothers and even Dad before he had left again, that he wouldn't, that he would never do that again. It's just that it was so warm and stuffy in the farmhouse, and the baby wouldn't stop squalling and then orange juice had got spilled all over his homework and he hadn't meant to hit Virgil, but he had just got so mad and then…

 _Stop it._

Climb. Just climb. Hand over hand to the top of the ladder. Focus on the next rung. Don't think about anything else. Pull yourself up over the top and onto the lacework metal grille. Higher ground where you can breathe the desert air.

There's a pre-dawn blush starting over in the east, and he can see out across the dunes. And it's stupid because he's been stationed in the desert for 18 months now, a redder, closer desert than this, and it should all remind him of New Mexico.

But it doesn't.

It has him thinking about Kansas.

Of how that little boy would sit alone in the water tower, or cling to the beam of the wrap-around porch and watch as the desert crawled closer and closer.

He can follow the logic of the little boy's father when he insisted his young family move back to the remote farmhouse in East Kansas that had been his own grandfather's. It made sense in a world where the war grew hotter and hotter with each month that passed, where every week more nations were pulled into the maelstrom. If someone detonated a dirty bomb in New York or San Francisco as they had in Paris, then they would be thousands of miles away. If they released a biological weapon, as they had to destroy Mumbai, then the farmhouse was miles from the nearest inhabited dwelling and self-sustainable for months. If the nukes started to fall, well they were all dead anyway. Better that they be somewhere warm and familiar and loved.

And for a while it had been safe, a place of interesting smells and chasing chickens and fleeing geese, of friendly sheepdogs and Grandpa's jokes – worse even then Gordon's – "Why did the police arrest the turkey? They suspected him of fowl play. What sort of horses come out at night? Nightmares." Of warm nights and stories and Grandpa's browns and corn on the cob.

And if you were a little boy and you were good and concentrated hard you could pretend you couldn't hear Mom screaming at Grandma in the kitchen over the blare of the radio and that you didn't notice when they sat together on the porch swing, Grandma's arm tight around Mom's shoulders. If you concentrated you could hear the pounding footsteps of giants and roar of dragons and not the buzz of fighters overhead as you all crouched in the storm cellar.

If you concentrated really hard you didn't miss Dad at all.

Kansas shouldn't have been a target. There were no military installations there. _No people._ Much of the state had been given over to monoculture, vast swathes of land farmed mainly by bots.

But there was food.

The blight had struck the entire Corn Belt, wiping out in a season the ecosystem that still produced over a third of the USA's food. Every crop had withered and died. The CDC had ordered the wholesale slaughter of sheep and cattle to prevent the pathogen spreading up the food chain.

The attack was meant to demoralise and starve what was still the most powerful nation in the world not kill it's population, but to the little boy, watching the stalks of corn night by night, laying their heads down to die as the fires burned in the distance, it had felt like the end of the world.

Does Virgil remember the air saturated with the smell of burning meat? Does John dream of the desert over-running the world? Do they get the same skip in their heart rate when they think of Kansas? The same prowling unease?

For the younger two, at least, it doesn't matter. Gordon was still just a wailing, drooling butterball when they left to go back to San Francisco. Alan wasn't even a thought, or at least he probably hadn't been until the truck had drawn up to the farm house on Armistice Eve and their father had climbed stiffly down from the caboose to shrieks of "Dad! Daddy!" But he hopes that for John and Virgil they remember a wonderland of saturated greens and blues and yellows and not the dry death-coloured wasteland that had troubled their older brother so much.

He's lucky then that he's not that older brother. Lucky that he was able to shrug that responsibility off, that person off, like an old coat, when he needed too. Lucky that when you can't sleep, you don't dream.

He checks the scanner, watching the tiny green dots flit across the sky and wonders if that other guy has done the right thing or the stupid thing or if sometimes the stupid thing can be the right thing.

Then he hears the _dink, dink, dink_ of someone climbing the ladder after him. He tenses, aware of how vulnerable he is up here on this little ledge, how the only other way out is a head first dive onto the cracked bitumen below.

Efe sticks her head above the ledge. "Hey, cowboy."

His hand tightens around the edge of the grille, and he's more aware than ever of the way his legs dangle in space. But there's none of that hard aggression. Her grin is all good humour and bonhomie. She clambers up, and dangles her feet over the edge just as he does, so that her position is just as precarious as his.

"What are you doing up here?" Her French is sweeter, more articulate, than her English.

"Watching the skies." His is stilted and rusty, still rings of the schoolroom, but she grins at him nevertheless.

"For a shooting star, maybe? You want to make a wish?"

"Yeah, sure," he says, in English.

She's different now. The aggression, some of the tension, seems to have drained out of her, like he's passed some test. She stretches and he watches her taut, bronzed limbs reach behind her head, scarred fingers interlinking. She shoots a coy glance his way when she sees him looking and scoots a little closer.

He clears his throat.

Her finger traces his knuckle bones.

She's older and she's not beautiful. That boy, the one who could have any women – flirty sorority girls, studious co-eds and badass pilots alike – giggling like smitten schoolgirls with just a lopsided grin and a 'hey, you', might never – _would never_ have looked at her twice. But he's not that boy anymore.

And she's here, and she's warm, and she wants him and he can't sleep.

So he kisses her, or tries to. She turns her head at the last moment and he catches only the corner of her mouth. But then her hand slithers beneath his shirt and she slides the ball of her palm across the muscles of his abdomen, while her other hand clutches at his shoulder blade. He breathes in the salty musk of her skin as her lips move against the hollow of his throat, his jawline. Finally her mouth is on his.

He pushes her off suddenly when he feels her tongue press something into his mouth. He spits a small blue tab into his hand. "What the-? Qu'est-ce que?"

She shrugs, blameless, as if she hadn't just tried to force a drug down his throat, as if she were completely harmless. "It's just something to help you relax." Her hand slides along his thigh. "It's good. Blunts those sharp edges."

He looks at the tab. It's small, duck egg blue, unmarked. He rolls it over and over between his thumb and forefinger. Then he shrugs and tosses it back.

Her lips massage his throat until he swallows, then her fingers continue their lazy circular pathway up his thigh. He tilts her head so he can kiss her.

"Qui êtes-vous?"

He shakes his head. "Nobody. I'm nobody."

She laughs as she tugs his shirt out of his trousers. She kisses the rust coloured heartlines that crisscross his palm.

"What's it like?" She kisses each of his fingers in turn, "Working for Le Fantome?"

"Who?"

"The Old Man. You work for him, ya?"

"We all work for him."

"No, man. I work for Burke. He work for the Old Man. But you work for the Old Man direct, ya? I like that. We could make a good team. You could take me to meet him."

"No." He catches hold of her hands at the wrist before they can go any further. "This is a one time thing. I'm not making a habit of it."

"Too bad," she nuzzles his neck, giggles almost coquettishly. "I can do one time only too. What's your name, ace?"

His teeth click together. "I'm nobody," he says.

"Even nobodies have names," she says, "Have histories, have wants." She's kissing him again. "What's yours?"

"It doesn't matter." He yawns.

"It does," the buzzing intensity is back in her now and she can't have but noticed that he is not responding to her anymore. There's a tension between them like a copper wire. "What is your name?"

"I…" He shakes his head as if to clear it out. "No, I…"

"Tell me," she whispers as her fingers stroke a distracting tattoo on his wrist. "It's okay. Your name?"

"I don't…"

"Where did you learn to fly like that?"

"Air force."

"Who are you working for?"

"No. I can't. I…"

"Who are you?"

"Nobody."

"Tell me your name."

He slumps forward, unconscious.

Efe _tssks,_ prods him hard in the kidneys, rolls him off her and sighs. She peeks beneath an eyelid to ensure he really is out cold, taps him on the face once and then rises, climbs back down the ladder.

When he hears her touch down on the ground below, he spits out a small, duck-egg blue tablet.

Okay, so she really is a spy. Right. Good to know.

It occurs to him that everyone seems to think he's really, _really_ stupid.

 _That's because you make really stupid life choices, dumbass._

Whoever she is, she's well equipped. Her transponder had been top of the line, and given her behaviour, that tab had contained a truth serum as well as a sedative. Not the stuff of amateurs.

 _What the hell is going on?_

It occurs to him to remember that just because she's a spy doesn't mean that she's a _bad guy_. He works for the bad guys. He _is_ the bad guy.

Still, it's better to be sure.

Either way, he's about to have to choose a side.

He gazes through the hole in the hangar wall and can see nothing in the gloom. No Efe, no sign of anyone else.

He removes his boots so he can climb down the ladder in silence, knotting his laces around his neck. At the bottom, he drops his boots to the ground, and draws his gun from his waistband.

 _"How can you hate guns? You're a soldier."_

 _"How can you be a soldier? You hate guns."_

Virgil had asked the other guy that once, the night before he left for basic training. They had taken the catamaran out to Mateo island, and climbed the rock face to the summit, camped there for the night with sleeping bags. Virg had been thirteen, maybe, or fourteen, no older, still small, still a curve where his older brothers were all angular lines, still young enough to be blunt.

The answer he had been given then had been bloated by pride and ego and rash self-righteousness, limned in phrases like 'pride', 'honour' and 'serve my country'.

The answer now is…

 _I don't know. I don't know anymore. I don't know about any of it._

 _I thought I knew._

 _I thought I knew what I wanted._

 _I thought I knew who I was._

 _I'm not even sure of that anymore._

 _But there's something wrong. And someone has to do something._

 _And there's no one here but me._

So he clicks the safety off his Sig and moves forward through the hangar.

He checks the cockpit first, but there is no sign of the others. Burke, Gunter, Jacob are all gone. Then he sees the cargo bay door is open.

On tiptoe he climbs up the gantry.

It's dark inside the plane's cargo bay. The refrigerated air cools the sweat on his skin, and he feels a rivulet run down the back of his neck, inside his t-shirt. Transparent containers are lined up in six parallel rows. Each has its own, individual climate-control chamber. Vacuum sealed into each is a couple of kilos of mustard yellow dust.

He stares at the nearest silo for a moment, wonders what it is, what the hell they've been hauling. A drug of some sort, he guesses, something new, something very illegal. The grains of dust look dense and sticky, more like pollen than sand. The abundance of yellow, and the underlit containers, give the whole inside of the cargo bay a jaundiced look. He does a quick calculation in his head and decides they must be hauling at least a tonne of the stuff.

Moving silently through the rows, he presses himself into the alcove between the silos and, pistol out, steps around the corner. Then he hears it, a noise straight ahead of him, an awful, organic gurgling sound. He knows it at once, wishes he didn't.

He springs out of his hiding place and around the corner. The monitoring station lies against the back wall of the cargo bay, its display still alive with humidty control displays and monitoring data. Face up, on the gantry in front of it, the specialist lies, gasping and shuddering. Around him, a pool blood spreads slowly outward, collecting in runnels in the metal floor, dripping down to the undercarriage of the plane.

He runs to him, drops down to his knees right in the puddle of ichor, shoves his gun back into his trousers with one hand as he rips of his shirt with the other.

 _Oh my God, she's cut his throat._

There's the single, ragged slash of a machete blade across the man's neck. His left common carotid artery has been ruptured, and it's pumping blood in great, red spurts that run down the man's neck and shoulders and soak into his ugly tie. There's blood in his mouth too, staining his teeth. He's probably bitten through his tongue.

The pilot presses the balled up wad of cotton in his hands up against the man's neck and looks around for, he's not sure what. Help? Danger? It's too much of a risk to call out so instead he just hushes the man. "It's okay. It's okay."

The specialist stares up at him, terrified. His attacker has sliced through his recurrent laryngeal nerve too, paralysing his vocal cords. All he can do is gurgle and splutter, as the blood keeps welling from the wound. It's already soaking through the balled up bandage of the shirt.

"It's going to be alright." he says, as his brain races.

It's human nature to over-estimate blood loss, to see the pool of red and panic. But this man's been pumping uninterrupted arterial blood out onto the floor for at least a minute now. He must have exsanguinated at least half his blood volume.

The man's pulse is thready at the other side of his neck and his skin and lips have taken on a telltale greyish tinge. Now he starts to shiver. Others might think the man was shaking with terror, but he knows that it's hypothermia, that the amount of blood in his body is no longer sufficient to keep up his core body temperature.

Even if they were anywhere but this godforsaken desert hole, this wound is not survivable.

"You're going to be fine," he lies. "Just hold on. You'll be okay. Shut your eyes. You're fine." He clasps his own hand over the man's clenched fist. His voice is calm, steady. A voice of command, a voice you can trust. His gift from Dad.

The man grows calmer, reassured. Shuts his eyes.

 _At least I can spare you this,_ he thinks, as the awful burbling rises. _You may never understand. John, you may never forgive me, but at least you will never have to feel this helpless. At least you'll never have to watch someone bleed out as you do nothing._

The man shudders beneath his hand.

"It's okay. It's okay." That's when he feels the barrel of the gun drill into his neck.

"Well, well." The voice is clipped, devoid of any trace of accent, utterly unknown.

He freezes and the seconds seem to slip by in slow motion. He thinks about how the cool metal presses into his bare skin, how beneath his hand the blood is still pumping, weaker now. How his hands and knees are now wet with blood.

"What sort of person cuts a man's throat and leaves him there to bleed out." The fury rises suddenly, white-hot, terrible. His pulse is pounding in his ears. He wants to scream.

"What sort of man is smart enough only to pretend to take that pill but so stupid that he'll throw down his weapon so he can watch a pig bleed to death?" She dips down and pulls his gun from out of his waist band.

"I wanted to help him." He knows himself how it sounds, the naïve logic of a child.

"Allow me." Her gun is perfectly silenced. There's a soft _phwap_ and the specialist goes silent.

The pilot's stomach rolls as blood and brain-matter spatters his face, but at the same time he's moving, aware that her gun is no longer pressed against his spinal column, aware that this is his only chance.

One arm grapples for her wrist, as the other swipes at the pool of blood beneath his feet, spraying it into her eyes.

Even _she_ recoils at that and it's enough time for him to strike the gun from her hand, to roll sideways along the gantry and come to his feet.

But she's still got his gun too, and she trains it on him, even as her left arm goes up to daub her eyes. "Don't move."

It _is_ Efe. Or at least the person who had called herself that. Looking at her now, he wonders how he could ever have mistaken her for a narced out stimhead. It's like the persona of Efe the junkie is a cracked plaster mask doing a poor job of hiding the person beneath. Someone cold, ruthless and glitteringly intelligent.

"Who are you?" he says.

She laughs. "I asked you first." She giggles, an altogether artificial sound.

"You _butchered_ him."

"He was filth," she says as if this explains it all. She steps over the body. "But you, I like you."

"You think I'm going to fly you out of here," he spits at her. "Forget it."

But she only smiles. "That's a possibility, it's true. You disabled my transponder. That's inconvenient." Her body language is utterly confident, utterly fearless, there isn't a flicker of hesitation. "We're on the same side."

He takes a breath. _Calm._ He needs to be calm now. He needs to think.

"You think these are common criminals?" she asks. "Did you ever think to ask what you were smuggling? Do you even know where you're standing right now?" He looks around uneasily, at the silos, at the row of after row of _unidentified_ dust. "Trust me," she says, "It's safer in our hands than in your employer's. You should be helping us." She lowers the gun.

"Us?"

She brushes this off. "A boy," she says. "Young, intelligent, multilingual, possessed of some exceptional skills, running with a pack of rabid desert dogs. You must have wanted to disappear _badly._ What did you do? Kill someone? Sell some piffling state secret? What did you think you were going to do? Hide away in some hole forever? Drink your way into oblivion? Do you think there is really any crime that can't be washed away with the right connections?"

"Fuck you."

"I know you. I want you." She takes a step forward and he pushes back. "I want to help you. You need _purpose._ You want to be nobody? We can make you more nobody than you could ever dream. We can give you a new name. A new purpose. A chance to make real change. A chance to save the world. Help me."

And suddenly he understands who she works for, who she is.

He had been eighteen, about to start his final semester in college, when his father invited him into his study and sat him down, poured him a Scotch, the first time he had ever done so, and told him that they needed to have a conversation.

"There may come a time when you are approached by a particular agency. They will, I suspect, try to recruit you. The names they will drop will be fanciful, the names of your childhood heroes, and the promises they make will be grandiose. They will speak of truth, freedom, liberty and one world and ask you to fight for that with them. They will have all the coolest toys and the best people and it will be immensely flattering when you are asked to join them. And if you say yes, I will understand. Their mandate is the greater good, to protect mankind at any cost. They have a name. Maybe you've heard it."

"You're an agent of SPECTRUM," he says, heavily.

She grins, catlike. "You just keep on surprising me. I like that. Yes. I work for SPECTRUM."

Not a bad guy then. A good guy. The greatest of goods. An agency without borders, without oversight, without law. The child of the global conflict. An agency with only one mandate, the preservation of the human race.

"You've enjoyed playing outlaw, I can tell. These insects think they're outside the law, we are above the law. Help me, and I will show you."

And he thinks about it. He thinks about having a purpose again, a duty. He thinks about starting again, unburdened by his father's legacy or his brothers' safety. He thinks about all the good he could do with a vast agency and the world's best technology at his back.

"Truth, freedom and one world?" he says.

"That's it."

He thinks about his father, sitting in his office chair, his eyes shadowed as he said, "I think you're old enough now to know what I saw that day on the killing fields of Marrakesh and what men will do for the promise of truth, freedom and one world."

"No," says the pilot, and he's more Scott Tracy than he knows.

The woman calling herself Efe sighs and rests her head to the side. "That's too bad," she says, and raises her gun to shoot him.


	10. Alan - How to Navigate by Turtle

**_In which storm clouds close on the island – Virgil Tracy sells his first painting – Cadet Waverly studies for his aeronautics exam – John Tracy has his plans derailed – Grandma Tracy waits up and a young man tries not to bleed to death in the desert_**

Alan has been missing for 16 hours now.

At least he really hopes he's been missing. He figures it will take Grandma a while to work out that he's gone and when she does, even longer to find the note he scribbled on his tablet and placed on his night stand.

He hopes that once she does find it she'll remember to retroactively count the hours he's been gone, so she knows that he's been missing for the full 16 hours. Maybe he should have put the time on his note as well as the date?

No, that's stupid.

It's been 16 hours since he ran away from home, three days since he decided he was going to go, five since his dad and brothers left him alone with Grandma on the island, seven since his Dad pulled him out of school and forgot to bother to tell him, eight since he told Pax and Tyler, "See you when I get back, guys."

His stomach rumbles loud enough that it might be more thunder. The waves slap the side of his catamaran and break like insults thrown. He pulls his wind sheeter a little closer around him and wishes he was _warmer._

As soon as he came up with the idea to run away, it seemed amazing that he hadn't ever thought of it before. An epic journey, a great adventure, out on his own facing peril and living on his wits. If you wanted to be a hero you had to strike out on your own. All his heroes: Deacon Dell, Buzz Aldrin, Spiderman, Scott Kelly, Han Solo, none of them had a bunch of older brothers hanging around, getting in their way, being mean or ignoring them. In stories, if the hero had any older brothers at all they were guaranteed to go evil or die before the story even got going properly.

Alan doesn't know what it's like to have a brother die, but he knows all about what it's like to have them go evil on you.

Five days and not one of them has answered his calls.

Five days of Grandma being evasive, of her arm going around his shoulders at odd moments, of being told to wait, just wait.

Five days with no word from Dad.

Kyrano's disappeared too, meaning his plans to go to the barrier reef are cancelled. And since Grandma can't fly, and Alan isn't allowed to get his licence until next birthday, there is no way for the two of them to leave the island. They've trapped him here.

Grandma's trying to play it off, and doing a terrible job. On Tuesday she even offered to play him at chess, which is something he does with Dad or John. Grandma's the family card sharp, she taught him how to play everything from gin rummy to three card Monte, but chess isn't really her game. Still, she'd beat him in two out of three matches.

"You want to talk about it, kiddo?" she had asked, as her bishop took his knight.

"No."

"Well, do you want me to make you a snack?"

"I'm not hungry."

He had pushed the pawn forward listlessly, trying to tie up the centre of the board with a modified Maróczy Bind. "Am I in trouble?"

"Oh, sweetie, of course not."

"It feels like I'm in trouble."

She had tried to give him a hug, but he had squirmed out of it and run upstairs.

The next morning he had woken up certain in the pit of his stomach that he was going to run away.

He had made plans. He had quartered provisions, studied sea charts and bus routes, stowed his passport in his sock, made copious notes, and spent 72 hours planning a trip 7000 miles across land and ocean, beginning on the island and ending in Madison Campground in Yellowstone Park.

And then at five AM this morning, he had slipped from the house with his rucksack, camera and telescope, eased his catamaran out of the boat shed and set off on the first leg of his adventure, across the great swathe of the Pacific Ocean.

His watch beeps and tells him it's okay to dig into his carefully rationed food supplies again. He reaches into his rucksack and grabs a protein bar, rips the foil wrapper with his teeth and starts to chew, easing the knot in his stomach a little.

It's been raining all day, great plump drops the size of tangerines that hit the water and explode like grenades. It's only now as darkness falls that the downpour is easing off. The sky's still bad-tempered though, a grumbly old man grey, like it's just waiting to start up again.

No stars. It won't be moonrise for another half an hour.

He hates nights where he can't see the stars.

That's something that connects him to John, who gets restless when the clouds bank up against the horizon. And to Dad too, who always says that a rainy night is a waste of perfectly good darkness.

Scott says that sometimes it's hard to imagine Dad flying in anything that doesn't have a cup holder and heated seats _._

Scott must not have much of an imagination.

By the time Alan was born Dad's most famous missions were already behind him. He'd been to the moon, he'd orbited Mars, he had rescued all those people on The Voyager manned-mission. But that doesn't mean Alan hasn't read about them, watched the footage, spent hours recreating sims of every part of those missions so he could fly them for himself.

Sometimes Alan doesn't understand what would have ever enticed Dad to come back to plain ol', boring ol' earth.

Sometimes when he sits under a velvet sky he imagines his Dad up there, out in the inky black, a space pirate, living on his wits from one adventure to the next. Sometimes Alan imagines he is there too, that it's just the two of them. In space, just him and Dad, in search of the next great thrill.

He wonders if Dad knows he's missing yet.

He wonders if he's worried.

Will he tell Scott and John that he's missing? Will he call up Gordon and Virgil and explain that Alan has taken off, has set out on his own great adventure? That this time _he's_ the one who is leaving them behind.

Will they be jealous?

Will they feel bad?

He hopes so.

He just wishes Grandma didn't have to feel bad too.

Just as he is thinking this a zippy electric type sound makes him jump and something bumps hard into the side of the catamaran.

A little 'bot is butting against his leg again and again, its caterpillar tracks firing up sand behind his it's little head.

""EX-MA 22, get back here! D-d-disable search protocol. EX-MA 22! Come back."

 _Busted._

He thinks about running, about scrambling out of the boat and deeper into the cave where no one would find him, about lying flat and pretending he's not there.

And as he stays, stuck between the things he _might_ do, a square, worried face peers into the cave. "H-hullo? Alan?"

The truth is that right until this second Alan had forgotten all about the island's other occupant. "Alan, is t-that you?" Dr Hackenbacker blinks at him and at the boat he's stashed in the cave.

The shame at being found here, hiding out, is like a kick to the nuts. He imagines how his brothers will laugh when they find out where he was hiding. Now everyone is going to know what a coward he is. "Hey, Doc."

He had planned for days for his epic trip, really he had. Only, sitting in the prow of his boat at five fifteen, provisioned for a three day solo sea journey, with gigantic raindrops beginning to fall on his nose, setting out, alone, into the Pacific had suddenly not seemed such a great adventure.

And maybe if he was Scott he would be braver, or if he were Virgil he would be calmer. If he were Gordon he would laugh and make a joke and set out fearlessly. If he were John he would have answers to all those questions of what if. _What if I run into trouble? What if there's another storm? What if they don't realise I'm missing?_

So, as the sun began to rise through the clouds behind his head, he had turned the catamaran west and steered it away from the mouth of the harbour and around the headland, and had gone no farther than the south west beach.

 _Coward. You're such a coward. Deacon Dell would never be such a coward. Dad would never be such a coward._

Dr. Hackenbacker gazes into the cave. He's dressed in a grubby blue work overall with neon reflective patches stitched to the collar, cuffs and belt trim. He looks puzzled, more than anything, to find Alan in the cave.

The little 'bot rams against the side of the catamaran, excitedly. He's a funny little thing. His head is way too big for his body, which is basically just a simple caterpillar track. He's got one giant, telephoto lens of an eye, irising in and out as it focuses on Alan. He's not like any of the patrol 'bots they have on the island.

"EX-MA 22! Stop that. I'm so _so_ sorry," says the Doc, and seems flustered in a way adults usually aren't.

"It's okay."

Kyrano had introduced Alan to Dr. Hackenbacker Saturday evening with formal courtesy. "Doctor, this is Alan Sheppard Tracy, the youngest of the brood. Alan, this is Dr Hiram Hackenbacker. Dr Hackenbacker is the lead engineer on one of your father's major projects. He will be staying here for the moment. And," he had added later, when the doctor had excused himself to go to his room, "If you do not treat him with the utmost courtesy I will drain the pool and you will clean every brick with my old toothbrush, which I have set aside for just such an occasion. Do I make myself clear?"

Alan had nodded. Kyrano was not known for making idle threats.

Grandma's threats had been even direr. "No pranks, no practical jokes, no 'funny' anecdotes about the time you and John dragged Virgil's mattress downstairs and set it adrift in the Pacific with him still on it. No," she had said, when Alan had started to protest, "Don't plead innocence. I'm fully aware who was responsible for that prank, and so too will Virgil be if you don't behave yourself." Alan had gulped. Virgil was inventive and he had a long memory. Alan still wasn't sure how he had got those worms into that can of alphabet soup. And John would be pretty steamed too if he learned that one of his rare dips into pranking had been rumbled after all this time.

"Dr Hackenbacker is a guest and a respected colleague. You'll treat him with every modicum of care and courtesy he deserves, junior. I see one exploding jellybean and I will feed you to the sharks, got it?

"Yeah, Grandma."

Now that he's met Dr Hackenbacker, Alan sort of gets what all the dire warnings were about. Being quiet is sort of an alien state on the island. Even John and Virgil, who both enjoy the _state_ of quiet, can be pretty damn loud when they're being deprived of that state. Kyrano can be quiet as a cat when he wants to be, but also loud as an rampaging rhino if you disturb him from his Sunday morning paper.

But Dr Hackenbacker looks like if you fed him an exploding jelly bean he might fall over dead from the shock.

"I'm coming out." The game up, Alan grabs his rucksack crawls out of the cave. The little 'bot follows.

The doc backs up as Alan crawls out of the cave, hovers as Alan throws himself down on the wet sand. The little 'bot is friendlier. It runs in excited circles around him, like a puppy.

"He's brilliant," says Alan, "What is he?"

"It's my mechanical assistant, e-experimental model."

"Oh. Hey MAX." Alan reaches out to pet the little 'bot. "What are you doing out here, Doc?"

"I needed to field test its heartbeat locator function and your grandma said I should use it to see if I could find you and ask if you wanted any dinner."

"Oh," says Alan, and his heart plunges into his feet.

"I didn't expect you to be so far away, though." Dr Hackenbacker scratches at the mosquito bites on his neck. "I had to walk for miles to find you. Did you know your GPS locator is malfunctioning?"

"Oh, really. That's funny." Alan grabs hold of his arm, bashful, to hide the bulky package wrapped around his bicep. He'd duck taped a miniature solenoid over his tracker scar to disrupt its signal.

"What are you d-doing all the way out here?"

"Star-gazing," Alan lies. "I thought I might be able to see things better at this side of the island where there isn't so much light."

The doc glances up at the rolling banks of cumulus. "You would have done better to check the satellite forecast for this evening. The negative front m-means there's only a three per cent chance that there will be any opportunity for optimal astronomy overnight."

"Oh yeah. I guess I forgot." MAX nuzzles at the leg of his jeans and he quickly changes the subject. "A heart beat detector's pretty cool though. You can get one for your sniper scope in Battle for Honor III." He kicks up sand with the tip of his trainer.

"Excuse me?"

"It's a game. You play world war two green beret, Honor Blackwater, making your way back through German occupied France, except all the Nazis have been taken over by this grey goo that's actually an alien lifeform that drops down in these weird eggs. In the end you fight Hitler on top of the Alien mothership. You use the heart rate monitor to snipe hostiles with headshots from the other side of the rue."

Dr Hackenbacker jostles his glasses and looks crestfallen. "I had designed it for use in finding buried survivors after major catastrophes."

Alan shrugs and looks away. "Oh. Right. Cool. That's good too." He shoves his hands into his pockets.

"Sh-shall we be getting back," The doc turns back towards the sloping path.

"Hey, watch out!" says Alan, snagging him by the leg and pulling before he has a chance to go any further.

And that's another difference between Dr Hackenbacker and his brothers. Any of his brothers would have hopped once, shaken him off and recovered their footing. Dr Hackenbacker hangs in mid-air for a moment and then comes crashing down like a felled tree.

"Oops! Sorry."

Alan leans over and tries to help him up but the doc waves him away. "It's fine. Alan, I said it's f-f-fine."

His glasses have bounced off his nose and a couple of feet down the beach. Alan retrieves them by snagging one of the stems between his toes. For the hell of it he puts them on his nose and peers through them. The lenses used to correct the professor's myopia make the world seem all woozy, but there's a cool AR overlay that allows Alan to see that the doc's heart rate is 114 and his core temperature is 37.9 degrees Celsius.

"Was that r-really necessary?" The doc rubs a patch on his back just where the display tells Alan he has sustained mild bruising.

"Hey, that's awesome!" Alan gazes around to see what else he can see with the glasses. "Real time diagnostics."

"A-Alan?" The doctor clears his throat. "Why did you do that?"

"Oh, sorry." He pushes the glasses from his nose onto his brow. "I didn't mean to make you fall. Um…you were about to stand on a turtle nest."

He points to the little patch of disturbed sand about a foot wide, which Hackenbacker had been about to stand right into. Beneath it, he knows, is an egg chamber, a pit filled with more than a hundred white eggs, the size and shape of ping pong balls.

Every year, beginning in October, the loggerhead turtles climb out of the sea and come to lay their eggs in nests on the island's beaches. The south beach is their favourite, but they leave their nests on all the beaches around the island. When he was younger the five of them would stumble out to the beaches some nights, armed with infrared flashlights, to watch the females climb out of the water to lay. Once or twice he's even seen a nest hatch, dozens of tiny little turtles come burrowing out of the sand, slipping and sliding their way down the beach and into the water.

It's something he's missed the last couple of years because he's been at school, his school year out of sync with summer on the island. It's late in the year for there to even be nests. This must be one of the last.

Somehow this thought makes his stomach turn.

"Oh," says the doc, "Turtles." He sweeps out a hand to stop MAX getting too close to the nest.

"Don't you like turtles?"

"N-not as much as your father likes turtles," says Dr Hackenbacker.

Does Dad like turtles? Alan supposes he does. He always made sure that if they were going to play baseball on the beach during nesting season, that they would first take the time to mark out the turtle nests with pegs and string to prevent accidents. And he made a big fuss about the glass in the villa being turtle friendly.

Alan chews on his thumbnail. "Turtle hatchlings navigate by light," he tells the doc. "And if artificial light is brighter than the moonlight reflecting off the sea they get confused and move inland instead of out to sea where they belong. Then they die. That's why Dad made it so that the glass in the villa filters the light so that it's emitted at a wavelength the turtles can't see."

"Yes," the doc nods, "V-very admirable, but it's rather a nuisance to find a clear polymer that won't upset the turtles and also can regularly withstand 30,000 Newtons of thrust."

"Huh?" And thinks this is a really weird thing for Dr Hackenbacker to say.

"Never mind, Alan. Grown up stuff."

"But why would you need to turtle-proof glass that can withstand enough force to put a rocket into orbit?"

Hackenbacker blinks at him, taken aback, then hastily says, "You seem to know a lot about – about t-turtles."

"Not really." Alan shrugs. "Just used to 'em. They were just always around when I was growing up. But they're cool. They're the best navigators in the world. They can sense changes in the earth's magnetic field, and they always come back to the beach where they were born to lay their eggs. And," he says quickly, like he's ripping off a band-aid. "My mom liked turtles."

It's one of the many things he knows about Mom, in the same way he knows the Earth goes round the sun or that he doesn't like smooth peanut butter. It's not something he ever remembers learning, instead it's stitched into the fabric of his life. It's coded into his home, in the little carved, ox horn turtle that sits beside Virgil's bed, in the blemished jade turtle tucked away on the book case above John's desk, in the stuffed toy turtle that sits, forgotten, on the top shelf of Scott's closet.

Alan's never wanted to own anything that belongs to his brothers as much as he wants to own those three turtles.

To change the subject from a painful topic Alan blurts, "Did you know my Mom has a star named after her. Not one we bought," he adds hastily, because he's been accused of this before. "John discovered it. LT-0170707," he adds proudly. "When he was at Harvard. He was a computer science major there for undergrad before he switched to MIT to work with Professor Oat for his PhD, but he used to hang around the Smithsonian a lot helping code heuristics for the Clay IV."

Alan is immensely proud of John. It had been John who had bought him his first telescope, shown him how to set it up and what to look for, taught him about quasars and red giants and dwarfs. Every year since he's bought him a new lens for his telescope. It had been through Dad that Alan had first learned about space, but it had been John who had been Alan's first proper teacher.

Sometimes it's hard to remember he's still mad at him.

"It's a Megastar in the small megallanic cloud, notable for having planets in the circumsellar habitable zone," he informs the doc.

"The circumsellar habitable zone?" The doc looks nonplussed.

"Yeah, that's the zone in a solar system where planets can sustain liquid water under sufficient atmospheric pressure, and depends on the radius of the planet's orbit and the radiative flux of the host star."

"Oh. Thank you." The Doc accepts his glasses. "I can see why your father… hmm." He clears his throat. "Your brother is very talented in his chosen fields."

"Nope, he's stupid and a butthead."

Dr Hackenbacker polishes his glasses on his overall and puts them on his nose. "Shall we go back?"

There doesn't seem a reason that he can say no to that. Besides, it's dark now, and though Alan's pretty sure Gordon made up that story about the giant Komodo dragon, there are snakes on the island and venomous scorpions and centipedes, and someone who doesn't even know how to recognise a turtle nest might run into trouble.

Still, he drags his feet as he makes for the cliff path.

But as slow as he's going, he's not as slow as the doc, who huffs and puffs and nearly falls three times as they walk up cliff path. Alan waits politely, goes as slowly as he's able, tries to show him where to put his feet while not appearing to show him.

"Do you like it here?" he asks, as he waits for the doc to catch his breath.

"It's very nice _nice_." The doc pants.

"It must be different from India?"

"Hmm? Yes, oh, I suppose. I haven't been back to India in 15 years. I grew up mainly outside of Birmingham. That's in the UK. The weather is much more t-temperate there."

"Cool." Alan is careful to push back a palm frond so it doesn't smack Doc in the face. "Do you have brothers and sisters?"

"M-me? No, I'm an only child."

"Oh. Lucky." Usually Alan would take the wood trail, up and down over the ridge of the volcano, but looking at Doc's red face and steamed up glasses decides it's probably safer to take the south trail.

"You think so? Perhaps." In the deep twilight he stumbles as he climbs over a tree root and Alan has to catch him.

"Brother are the worst." Alan says with the authority of an expert, as he steadies Doc. "You know, maybe you should think about adding an infrared display to your glasses if you're going to be out after dark." He ducks his head. "I could make you one if you like."

" _You_ could make _me_ one?" Alan's a little put out by the tone in which he says that. It's a bit too close, too familiar. It reminds him too much of the ringing laughter of the engineers at the Sheppard Space Centre, and when he thinks of them he feels that gnawing in his stomach all over again.

"Yeah. Of course."

"And do you make infrared filters for sniping headshots too?"

"Nope. For turtle watching." Virgil had been the one who taught him to assemble an infrared flashlight and to make infrared goggles out of old pairs of sunglasses. Gordon had refined the process, for midnight candy raids around the house, but remembering his promise Alan doesn't share this with Doc.

"I see." Doc stumbles over another tree root. "Dammit."

"Hey, can MAX help? MAX, can you give us some light, buddy?"

The little 'bot chirrups and floods the pathway with halogen light so bright that Alan has to hope there aren't any turtles hatching tonight.

"EX-MA 22, reduce light intensity to 12, please," says Doc and is ignored. "EX-MA? EX-MA… MAX?"

The light dims and the 'bot chortles to himself, pleased. Alan laughs and Dr Hackenbacker harrumphs. "H-he's supposed to be a learning AI but he's not supposed to learn not to like his own name."

"Nah, he's cool," says Alan. "He reminds me of Artoo."

"The droid?"

Alan shakes his head. "Scott's chocolate lab. He died before we came to the island." Is it wrong that he remembers Artoo better than he remembers Mom? Artoo following Scott around the fields; shaking paws or calmly sitting as Alan snaked his arms around his neck and buried his head in his fur.

John says that Artoo got liver cancer and had to be put down, that when it happened Scott had climbed up on the roof and stayed there for two days. But Alan doesn't remember any of that, just the smell of Artoo's fur and his soft hazel eyes.

As much as he's wanted one, Alan's never been allowed to have a dog. Gordon had fish and Virgil kept an iguana for a while. Scott and John used to help out at a local stables when they were in school, but any animal that might disrupt the local ecosystem of the island is banned. So Alan has the turtles instead.

"I see," says Doc. "Well, MAX it is then, it seems. Lead the way, MAX."

MAX out in front, they make their way along the path, Dr Hackenbacker doing much better now that he can see where to put his feet, though Alan learns quickly not to distract him with too many questions, in case it causes him to trip over his feet. It doesn't take that long before the villa is in sight.

"Here we are, safe and sound."

"T-thank you." Doc turns to look at him. "You're a bright young man, Alan."

"Thanks, Doc."

"I know I haven't made my-myself available to you yet and I apologise. On Monday we will start properly."

"Huh? Monday?"

"I think a balanced curriculum of math and the sciences. I'm afraid I'll have to defer to outside help for the social sciences. They've never been my cup of tea."

"W-what?" Now it's Alan's turn to stutter.

"Your new curriculum, of course. Is there any subject you'd like to study fir – Alan!"

But Alan has already taken off, up the trail and towards the house, running so fast that for a moment he thinks his heart is going to burst. Maybe it has burst, because it hurts so much he can't breathe.

The lights twinkle, reflected in the pool. The patio door is open. He pounds inside, ready to _demand_ answers from his gran.

She's not in the kitchen, or the living room. He runs upstairs. She's going to tell him the truth. She's going to tell him exactly what's going on, or else she's going to summon Dad _right now_ and he's going to tell him. Then everyone _– everyone –_ is going to stop lying to him.

"What next then?" Grandma's voice coming from Dad's bedroom freezes him. She sounds worried. Through the crack in the door he can see her folding a shirt. She must be on the phone.

"You know as much as I do." Alan's heart skips a beat. Dad isn't on the phone, he's _in the room._ "Kyrano has gone to Seoul to take that meeting."

"Ben went? Alone?"

" _Mom._ I'd trust him with my life. With _their_ lives."

"That's not my concern, Sonny-Jim and you well know it." She moves out of sight of the crack in the door and Alan hears the soft cushiony bounce of the bed. He leans a little closer so he can hear better, prays his thumping heart doesn't give him away. "But it's a lot to ask to make him go back into all that, now."

"I know. But what choice do I have? He wouldn't let me go in person. Forbade me, as a matter of fact. I'll spare you the details of what he called me."

"Well, at least someone in this family has some sense. Ben's really had no other word of him?"

"No. It's funny. I could have handled it if he took a swing at me. I was ready for a confrontation. I just never expected for him to take off like that without talking to me first."

 _They're talking about me,_ Alan realises, shocked. _They think I really ran away._

"Hmmph," Grandma sniffs loudly. "You under-estimated him. He saw his only chance to resist the great and powerful Jeff Tracy, so he took it. How did you think he was going to react to this sort of bombshell?"

"I…"

"He's reckless and bull-headed. Like his father."

Alan feels a warm swell of pride at being compared to his dad.

"And _you_ wanted a strong reaction from him. Otherwise why this whole song and dance number? You could have just sat him down and talked to him about it, hashed out the details, like normal folks do, instead of springing it on him like a bear trap." A second _spoing_ of the mattress.

"I wanted to galvinise him."

"A1 on that count."

"I mean, get him to grow up a little. Consider what's really important. Get him to drop the whole callow rich boy shtick he pulls."

Alan's didn't think his heart could sink any further. Does he act callow and rich? He doesn't think he does. He doesn't mean to. He thinks back to the day in sixth grade when he asked Pax if he would come visit him over the summer.

 _"Hey, maybe you could come stay on the island during break?"_

 _"You have your own island?"_

 _"Just a small one."_

Nowadays he mostly tells people he lives in Hawaii.

"He's not like that when he's stateside." Dad says, and Alan feels a rush of relief. "I've talked to his superiors."

"Maybe you should be talking to _him."_

"They all say the same thing. That he's bright, and generous and has an eye for details. That he works harder than anyone else and that he's as reckless with his own life as he is attentive to the safety of others."

"Jeff, none of this is news. He's always been a good boy. He's always been willing to bust a gut trying to do what he thinks is right, ever since he was four years old. You know who it is he's been trying to emulate."

"Ha. I think he's spent half his life afraid he'll grow up to be just like me and half his life afraid that he won't."

"That's every son's curse, honey."

A soft chuckle. "Yeah? What's every parent's?"

"To see your kids in pain and to not be able to do a damn thing about it. He'll find his way home. His sort always does."

"I don't know, Mom. Maybe I pushed him too far this time."

"Trust an old pro on this. He'll come home."

"I will. I will. Here I am, Dad. Here I am." Alan cannot contain himself anymore. He rushes into the room. "I didn't run away. Not really. I'm back."

Dad and Grandma are sitting side by side on Grandma's double bed. Dad's got his shirt rolled up to his elbows. His tie is loose at the neck and his hair is mussed, so for a moment, Alan's reminded of Scott, not of Dad, because it's strange to see Dad not looking tidy and put together. He jumps to his feet when he sees him. "Alan."

"I'm here. I'm sorry I scared you, Grandma. I'm here."

He throws his arms around Dad, a second long hug, lightning fast, so his father won't think him a baby, and is surprised by the strength of his father's grasp around his shoulders, preventing him from letting go.

Then grandma steps on his toe. "Hold on a second, kiddo. What's all this about running away?"

"Alan?" The two of them are staring at him now and Dad's pushed him away enough to look in his eyes. "You ran away?"

"No. Yes. I was going to. I did. Yellowstone Park."

"What about Yellowstone Park?" Dad is stern now and Alan feels himself shrink.

"There are grey wolves there. And grizzlies and bison and deer and Tyler and Pax. Tye is staying with his Moms at the Madison Campground for two whole weeks, Dad. And Pax is with him and his Moms said that I could come too, and I asked you but you said no. And I really wanted to go and I hate it here." It all comes out like a levee busting. "I hate it here and you all left without me and I thought maybe I'll just go, and then at least there will be someone happy to see me. And it's not that far, only 7000 miles."

" _Only_ 7000 thousand miles? Grant, my love, if you could -" Grandma starts to interrupt, but Dad holds up his hand.

"So I thought if I could take the catamaran to the north island, then I could take a commercial jet from there and then it's just bus rides and then Tye's Moms would take me back to school next week and I didn't mean to scare Grandma but I just wanted to get out of here and Dad it's not fair, it's not fair that you left me and you never even said and – "

This time it's Alan whom Dad silences with a wave of his hand. "To be clear, your plan was to take a catamaran across six hundred miles of open water to the mainland? You weren't going to tell anyone? You were just going to go?"

Alan scratches the floorboard with his foot, afraid now to look Dad in the eye. "Yes."

"Then why are you here now?"

"I got scared," he admits, shame-faced.

He glances up, but Dad's face has gone as hard as a marble statue's. "Scared? Alan, if you don't know how unbelievably, incredibly, maddeningly dangerous and stupid that idea is then I don't know what I'm going to do with you."

"'m sorry, Dad." It comes out as a whisper.

"I don't want you to be sorry. I don't even want you to say that you'll never do it again. What I want is for you to understand why it's not an idea you should have ever entertained in the first place."

"But I _didn't_ do it." Alan protests, and the gum lump is back in his throat.

"Because you were scared. And that isn't a good reason not to do something." Dad almost shouts.

The injustice of this is so terrible that his eyes burn.

"Jeff." Grandma touches Dad's arm lightly.

"I wanted to be brave," says Alan, "I wanted to be like you and Scott and Deacon Dell. How can I be in trouble for doing something and not doing something at the same time?"

"It's not about being in trouble. It's about making you understand." Dad's voice is quieter all of a sudden. "This is important, Alan." He sighs, reaches up and undoes the knot of his tie, slips it out from his collar and leaves it on the bed. Alan watches in silence.

"Let's take a walk." He turns to Grandma. "Don't wait up for us."

"You know I will."

Down in the kitchen Doc is knocking sand off Max's treads. Dad shrugs out of his court shoes, into the brown hiking boots and dayglow wind-sheeter hanging from a peg by the door. "Brains, I'm going to take Alan for a walk to the apex of the volcano. Can you meet us down below? Say 45 minutes."

Dr Hackenbacker looks surprised. "Down b-below? Yes, Mr Tracy."

"Let's go, sunshine."

The moon's up by now, a fingernail sliver of yellow just over the horizon, but it's still dark, and though the path up the side of the volcano is familiar and studded with sensor lamps that light up at their approach, and it's also step and rocky and takes up most of his attention, leaving no time for talking.

Which is good, because it leaves him time to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth the way Kayo is always harping on at him to do, to let the hard lump sink back in his throat, to take most of the sting out of his eyes.

When they reach the summit, to Alan's surprise the guest house is covered over with scaffolding and plastic sheeting. "Are you building?"

Dad looks at the building works. "No. It's coming down. Something new is going up in its place."

"Really?"

"Yes." He turns to him. "I'm about to show you a secret, something I haven't shown anyone."

"Not even Scott?"

"Especially not Scott. This way." He ducks under a sheet.

A sudden horrible thought occurs to Alan. "Hey, where will Kayo and Kyrano live?" He calls after Dad.

"Main house. When they're home."

"Oh." The thought of Kayo living in the house, of her just down the hall from him, makes Alan's ears grow hot. He realises he's getting left behind and dives after Dad.

Beyond the plastic sheeting is a brand new steel door. Dad keys in an eighteen digit passcode, his handprint and his retinal scan before it opens. "After you."

He steps through into pitch black. The door slams shut behind them with a resounding bang. Alan can hear the rush of wind and when he looks up, he can see an oval cut out of the sky.

Dad flicks a breaker and the lights come on.

"Whoa!"

They're standing in the hollowed out well of the volcano. Dad's excavated the whole thing. A metal gantry wraps around the core in a looping spiral. It seems to go down forever.

"Dad, it's amazing!" He leans over the rail and hears his voice echo back to him. "Echo!" He shouts. _Echoechoechoecho…._

"Not bad, but it needs more structural integrity work done." From a locker Dad pulls out harnesses and hard hats, places one on Alan's head. He checks Alan's harness before tying them both into the safety line.

"Down?" asks Alan.

"Down, but let me go first."

Their footsteps ricochet off the walls of the volcano. Alan trails his hand along the smooth, cool, basalt. The steps seem to go on and on.

They've been walking for ten minutes when Dad puts out an arm to stop him. "Let's stop here for the moment. Take a break."

Alan goes to the handrail, wraps his hands around it, stares down into the inky pool of darkness below. "It's like there's a hole in the world."

Dad joins him at the railing, taps him once on the shoulder. "Talk."

Alan squirms. "It's okay."

"You ran away from home."

"I didn't get very far."

This earns a small laugh. "Small mercies. But the intent was there."

"I'm sorry, Dad."

"Do you understand why I'm not happy with you?"

"Because if I'd run away it would have really upset Grandma?"

"Yes. And?"

"And because I was being selfish."

"And?"

"And taking the catamaran could have been dangerous." His fingers drum on the rail. "I just wanted to be brave. To have an adventure on my own. To be a hero," he blurts. "Like you."

Dad crosses his arms. "Alan, I want you to learn this lesson now. There is no such thing as a lone adventurer. Heroism isn't about a single person grandstanding. That's the most selfish and reductive way you can think about it."

There's a sudden change in temperature and then a hum in the air. It's started to rain again, a tropical squall coming in off the sea, falling down through the mouth of the volcano. "But you – "

"Me nothing. Alan Sheppard couldn't have made it into space without his team at Houston. Edmund Hillary would never have summited Everest without Sherpa Tenzing, and I would have never been able to do what I did on Voyager if I didn't have Lee Taylor and Alice Tan backing me up and an entire team on Earth troubleshooting for me. Heroism, real heroism is about working as a team, about being a smart and as safe and as well prepared as you can be, doing things because they need to be done, not because they make you feel brave or look cool. Do you understand?"

Alan shuffles his feet.

"Were you scared today?"

Alan reaches his hand out and catches a couple of fat droplets in his palm, lets them run through his fingers. "Yes. Was that a bad thing?"

"No. Today it protected you. But why were you scared?"

Alan thinks about it. "In case something went wrong?"

"Yes."

"In case the weather got rough and I didn't know what to do?

"Yes."

"In case you didn't know how to find me?"

"Yes. Do you think those are reasonable fears?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think I could have made it to Mars if I was worried about all those things?"

"No."

"Astronauts know about fear, Al. But we know how to combat it with training, preparedness, and teamwork. You can't plan for every eventuality but you can do your best to plan for as many as possible. If you do that fear becomes another tool, something that prepares you, something you can push past if you need to."

Alan thinks about this for a moment, then he asks. "Dad, are you ever afraid?"

Dad reaches out and lets the rain wash over his hand. "Of course."

"When are you afraid?"

He turns his palm up. "Right now. I'm afraid right now."

"Really."

"Yeah." His fist closes.

"Oh."

"I'm sorry that I left you alone this week. I know it's been hard for you. But I had good reasons."

"Work reasons?"

"No, not work reasons."

"Can I help?"

Unexpectedly, Dad reaches out and puts an arm around his shoulder. "You're a good kid." He squeezes his arm. "No more running away, okay?"

"Okay. Promise."

They stand there for a moment in the darkness, with Dad's arm wrapped around him, and Alan doesn't even mind. "It's okay if I have to leave school, Dad," he decides at last.

"You don't have to if you don't want to."

"But…" And he is about to point out it is too late.

"I was hasty. If you want to go back next semester, you can. But I hope you'll keep an open mind to my proposition first."

"Why do you want me to leave?"

Dad lets go his hold on him so he can turn to look him in the eye. His eyes are serious again, but not hard. "It's complicated. Part of it is that it's safer for you on the island. Part of it is I think you might learn more from me and Dr Hackenbacker. Part of it is purely selfish. I miss you."

"You do?" Alan glows.

"Yeah, bud. I do. But there's also another reason and this may be harder for you to understand, Things may start to happen soon and they're the sort of things which from a distance seem glamorous, dangerous and exciting."

Alan's mouth drops open. "Really?"

"And I know how you feel about glamorous, dangerous and exciting."

Alan grins.

"Yes. Which is exactly why I want you to see them close up. I want you to see the danger and the darkness and the struggle. I want you to witness first-hand the long hours and the sleepless nights, I want you there to know every sprain and bruise and fracture, so that when it comes to it – when you're old enough, you can make an informed decision."

"Dad?"

"Yeah."

"I don't get it."

Dad cracks an unexpected smile. "I guess I'll have to show you, then." He speaks into a pin in his collar. "Brains, light her up."

Light floods the well, turning night into day, and Alan realises that all this time he's been standing next to an enormous chrome rocket that is loaded into the well of the volcano like a bullet.

It is one hundred per cent the coolest thing he has ever seen. It's a slender one-stage rocket, slimmer than the Odyssey, with three retractable grasping arms the sweetest ion engines ever. And is that - ? He makes a little whoop of joy. That must be a diamond tipped drill in the nose cone.

His squeak turns to a howl of disappointment as he sees the rain fall through the rocketship, causing blue plasma to sizzle. "Ugh, it's just a hologram."

"No, it's an AR blue print, designed to ensure the launch tube is up to spec for the real thing," says Dad.

"You mean, she's real?" Alan tries to reach out to touch her only to be hauled back by the seat of his pants.

"Allie! And no, not yet. But when she's ready she should be the fastest ever built. Triplet ion engines, full recoverability and independent launch. She could circumnavigate the solar system in a week."

"Wow."

"There's more." He lifts his p comm and shows Alan more blueprints. "An in-orbit rocket plane, top speed 15,000 miles per hour; a heavy duty transport plane that can break Mach seven; a submersible with search and rescue functions; the most advanced orbital communications hub ever built." He shows each of the blueprints in turn.

"Wow," he says again, he's staring so hard he feels like his eyes might just pop out of his head, but he wants to take in every detail. "Dad, they're so amazing."

"Yes. You can thank Dr Hackenbacker and his team."

"He did this?"

"Yes."

Alan shudders shyly when he remembers the engineer and how he had run off and left him. "D'you think I can call him Brains too?"

"If you ask his permission first, then maybe."

Alan gazes at the rocket in wonder. "What are you going to do with them?"

"Save lives," says Dad and Alan thinks how defiant he sounds as he says it.

"Really?"

"Yes. I want to create an organisation that will push the limits of impossible, that will help people in real time, but that will also be a symbol, something to remind the world of all that is good and hopeful in humanity, just like NASA was in the 1960s. People need hope, Alan and with the Rescue Rangers I think – "

Alan guffaws. "Dad!"

"What?"

Alan stuffs his fist into his mouth to stop his sniggers. "Rescue Ranger?" Sometimes Dad is so embarrassing it's difficult to look at him. "You can't call it that!"

"You don't like Rescue Ranger?"

"No it's okay, I guess." Alan says quickly so as not to hurt his feelings. "But maybe we could come up with something cooler." Outside, a peel of thunder booms very close by. It echoes through the entire well. Alan listens for a second and then says, "Like the Super Squad. Or the Speed Force. Or, how about the _Danger Ranger_?"

"We'll negotiate, okay?" Dad reaches out and knuckles the crown of his head. "Come on, smartass let's keep moving. I have more I want to show you."

He starts to walk down the steps again, and Alan follows, his heart thrumming in his chest. He can't help keeping one eye on the gleaming side of the rocket and imagining the day she'll be real, when he can reach out and touch her, maybe even _f_ ly her.

"Hey, Dad," he says.

"Yes?"

"Maybe we could paint her red?"


	11. John - Legwork

**__**_AN: Hey there_ _gentle reader. Bully for you for making it this far - and yes, I know if every thousand years a bird took flight, flew across the world and pecked once at a mountain by the time the mountain was pecked to dust this story would still not be updated._

 _BUT_

 _What you may not be aware is that over on Archive of Our Own there exists another 90,000 words of Boys Become Thunderbirds Related nonsense in the form of **An Endlessly Rising Canon**_ _co-authored by me, the spectacular **PreludeinZ** and the inimical **Carry On Starkid**. It mainly details the trouble Scott can get himself into when left to his own devices and the barriers of space_ _-time begin to break down. And you can always drop me a line if you want to know more. **It's quite modern what we do, and it may feel a bit strange at first but I hope that you'll enjoy it.**_ _  
_

 _Now back to another lost young man in the desert._

* * *

 ** _In Which there is home-made spaghetti – Alan Tracy learns the origin of the name Brains – Lieutenant Cooper Waverly pines for an imaginary woman – Virgil Tracy has an assignation with a real one – a young man crosses the border into Turkey and it is a long way to Illinois_**

There's something about deserts that have always appealed to John.

He supposes it's the obvious, the connection to the landscapes that have been in his dreams since he was a little boy. There's a vastness to the desert, a cleanliness; towers of space that seem to go on and on to a horizon without end. It makes him feel calm.

 _Like a moth to a bug zapper,_ Grandma used to say, as she attacked him with the tube of sunscreen when he was a kid, or painted the tip of his nose with aloe Vera when he came home pink and peeling. He's not built for the desert, that's certainly true. Of the five of them he burns the quickest, roasting the colour of poached salmon after five minutes in the sun, some unfortunate throwback to the Scotch-Irish roots of the Tracy clan. But Man wasn't made for space either, yet his Dad stood on the face of Mars. So maybe it's not natural that John wants the desert.

When he was 11 the six of them had spent one February Fourth in a specially built capsule in the Mojave Desert that mimicked the lunar simulation modules the SETI Institute had used in the early 2000s, when NASA had been prepping to go back to the moon. John doesn't remember a time when he was happier than he was staring out the porthole of that cramped little module, imagining himself among the company of the great men and women who had walked on the moon.

Sometimes when he needs to gather himself, John imagines himself curled up in the porthole window, watching the lunar landscape of the Mojave.

Not today though. This desert doesn't make him feel calm. It makes him feel sweaty and anxious and itchy all at once. It looks too yellow and scrubby and full of rattlesnakes, like scar tissue on the landscape and as it hurtles past in blocks of olive and grey under a forget-me-not sky he wishes he were somewhere else.

 _A good first test._

There's a chime above his head. The magnet train is slowing down. He gathers his stuff and rises. A few people make note of his movement, but nobody else in the carriage makes a move to disembark the train.

The magtrain glides to a halt and there's a whoosh of hot, dry air as the door unseals itself. He steps out onto the raised platform. Along the train, other passengers, most in uniform, do the same. No one pays him any attention as they hurry towards the stairs and the exit, swiping their passes through the scanner. He follows.

There are convoy trucks to pick up waiting officers in the parking lot, and a dusty town taxi idling out front of the red brick building, looking for business. He ignores it and makes the short walk into town.

By the time he gets there, he's sweating. Avalon is a small, neat little place that mainly serves to support Rainshadow Airbase. There's a county hospital and a couple of mom and pop stores, though most of the business has drained out of the centre of town. School kids wander around in packs. An elderly woman walking a tiny poodle smiles at him. He finds McGruck's, a sports' bar in a big lot off the main street.

The bartender is quick to ID him, but only shows real interest in his birthdate and after that leaves him nursing his beer and his tablet at the bar. Off duty airmen come in in dribs and drabs, and he earns a couple of curious looks, but nobody bothers him.

A little before seven there's a tap on his shoulder, "Tracy?"

A rangy man in captain's stripes has come up behind him. There's a stir from the peanut gallery. This is not, John guesses, habitually a bar where officers come to drink. "John Tracy, right? I'm Skip Guerra."

They've met before, though Skip probably doesn't remember and John doesn't remind him. Skip and Scott had been at school together and though Skip had been some years older, they had made friends running varsity track together. Scott had dragged John round to the dressing room to meet Skip the night he led the school football team to state. He had been gracious as he accepted John's congratulations, though obviously wired to the moon. Skip had left for the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs the same year Scott had gone off to Yale. Now they serve in the same unit.

Skip is big in every dimension, has inches even on Scott. A small moustache makes him look older than his 26 years, and he is, John can tell, despite his bluff handshake, nervous.

"Thanks for coming."

A tight nod. "I've got a car outside."

They drive out of town, talking around the subject in question. Skip talks about the weather, Williams' Prep, their old school and the differences between the GDF and the space programme. They reach Skip's house, which is off base, where Skip's wife Lisa and home-cooked spaghetti are waiting to ambush them.

John's impatient to get on with the task at hand, but it's rude to say no, particularly when he's asking such a big favour. They've got an 18-month-old son, Jake, and from the size of Lisa's belly, there's another one on the way shortly. Jake is fascinated by John's red hair, and John – for whom babies have always been a separate country he is not planning on visiting – puts up with his interest. Lisa asks interested if routine questions about WWSA and Skip tells anecdotes about air force life. If it's all designed to make John feel guilty, he thinks, as he passes around the basket of garlic bread, it's working.

But when dinner is over and the plates are cleared Skip rises. "Time for John to be going," he says. "I'll be back later." He kisses Lisa's cheek.

As John closes the car door he says, "You don't have to do this."

Skip starts the engine and puts the car into gear and the matter is settled.

They drive.

Dad is Dad so he heard through channels first.

Scott is AWOL.

Or, to be precise, he is only guilty of Failure to Repair; but at 0900 hours yesterday Lieutenant Scott Tracy did not report to base after leave, and by 1700 hours he still has not reported to his commanding officer.

He's not the only officer ever to fail to report in after leave. Maybe he missed his flight. Maybe he got the dates wrong. Maybe his mates, in high spirits, duct taped him to a pole and have forgotten where they left him. This sort of thing happens all the time.

Just not to Scott.

From the expression on Skip's face he thinks so too.

Dad had called just as John was out for his morning run, having spent most of the night bailing Gordon out of a premature court marshalling at the WASP gala. "I'm telling you this," Dad had said once he had broken the news, "Only because there's a reasonable chance where you're working that you might hear through other channels."

John had never thought of himself as someone to be gossiped about or at. Maybe it was different with Scott. There was enough cross-over between the WWSA and the GDF that there was a possibility he would hear from some other source.

"You haven't told the others?" he had asked.

"I don't think there will be a need to."

"When was the last time you heard from him?"

"The morning he left the island he called me a selfish, conceited son of a bitch. So at least we know he wasn't acting out of character." The attempt at a joke had fallen flat.

"He's been missing a week?" He had been bundled up against the arctic cold. Suddenly his brain had felt as numb and clumsy as his mittened hands.

"Absent. Not missing. Your brother's always been good at letting me know when he's mad. Torching his career is certainly a potent signal fire."

"Dad…"

"Kyrano's already on his trail. And we'll find him. I want you to stay where you are. Attend to your studies. If he contacts you, of course, let me know. Otherwise, I'll update you periodically."

"Dad, I…"

"This is a good first test for you."

A good first test. A test that he is failing.

John Tracy is a hacker like no other. John Tracy writes code the way Paul McCartney wrote pop hits. John Tracy has never met a digital door he did not want to open.

John Tracy cannot find his stupid, ignorant luddite of an older brother.

It should have been easy. Scott's financial records, his flight history, his passage in and out of the security net that encircles the globe, it should have led John to him like a luminous contrail.

But Scott had landed in Algeria, withdrawn 2,000 dollars' cash at the airport foreign exchange, disappeared into the city and…

Nothing.

No Scott. No trail. Nothing but white noise. Not even a starting point.

John spent half his time in MIT thinking and writing about search heuristics; for search and rescue; for stars; for prime numbers. Even the most basic search needs a node to start from.

And so now, he's here, with Skip, smiling politely in the passenger seat as they were waved through gate at Rainshadow Airbase, looking for a node.

Scott had been the one to ruin their trip to the Mojave, hadn't he? For three days all six of them had lived in close quarters, in the lunar simulation module, mimicking the lives of the first settlers on the moon, and how Dad had lived with Captains Taylor and Tsang when they had been building Shadow Alpha One. But on the morning of the fourth day, Scott had stumbled out of bed, and out the airlock, to relieve himself against the side of the capsule, decompressing the pod and killing his father and four brothers in the process.

Scott had been apologetic but unconcerned. Said it was an accident and that he had forgotten where they were. He had been nearly 14, unhappy about Dad's decision to leapfrog him two years ahead into ninth grade, and ready for a little kickback. John, on the other hand, had been distraught, not ready for the adventure to end. He had begged Dad that they be allowed a do over, but Dad had said no. There were no second chances in space.

He doesn't know why he's thinking about that now.

"This is it." Scott lives in unaccompanied officers' quarters. Skip pulls up to the squat block of condos and parks. "Do you know what you're looking for?"

Not really. Some clue or hint. Some trace of where Scott's going or where he might be going, or what he might be thinking. An impression. A scent. "I'll know it when I see it," he says.

"John, I hope you find what you're looking for, but you should know, I don't think you're going to find your brother in there."

This sentiment makes John unreasonably uncomfortable. "You and Scott fly together, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"And you're friends?" He's got a sudden overwhelming feeling that this was a bad idea.

But Skip gives him a cryptic smile. "I'm not doing this because you asked politely. He does talk about you."

"He does?"

"And I get the distinct impression that if anyone can find that squirrelly motherfucker and get him back where he belongs then it's you. Yeah, we're friends, John."

 _A good first test._

"Okay."

They get out of the car. Skip's swipe key gets them into the building and up the stairs to Scott's condo. The first thing he notices is how clean it is. It's at odds with the Scott he knows, who leaves dishes in the sink and a breadcrumb trail of his clothes from the bathroom to his bed every night when getting undressed. Any habit can be learned, he supposes and somewhere along the way, someone has beaten tidiness into Scott.

The kitchen-living room is sparse, impersonal. He rifles through the kitchen, but the cupboards are bare of anything more exciting than protein powder and cereal. The fridge holds nothing but ketchup and mustard.

He tries the bedroom. Skip follows.

In here too is neat and orderly, the corners of the bed are squared off. There's a Light Type interface built into the desk that would have connected to Scott's personal drive. When Skip isn't looking, John takes a HUB from his pocket and sets it down, activating pre-set commands to clone everything that the interface has processed over the last two months.

He doesn't linger by the desk and crosses to the other side of the room. The closet contains only neatly pressed uniforms, a couple of casual shirts in blue and grey, and row after row of folded white t-shirts. There's a small safe in the bottom of the closet, but it hangs open and any valuables have been cleared out.

There's a digital picture frame on the windowsill that clicks to life when it detects motion, but the photos it cycles through are curiously blank of personality. A group picture of Scott's squadron, a formal photograph of him smiling starkly at the camera at the receipt of his bronze star and a family portrait, the same one that goes out to the press when they're looking to write about "Billionaire industrialist Jeff Tracy and his five fine boys".

John feels a creep up his spine, like razor scraping bone. None of this feels genuine. It's like he's walked into an exhibition showcasing the life of one, 'Lieutenant Scott Tracy' rather than into a place where anyone actually lives.

Angry again all of a sudden, he yanks open the drawer of the nightstand.

Inside the drawer sit a string of condoms, a blue inhaler, 11 months out of date, because Scott always forgets to resupply his prescription unless he's having one of his infrequent asthma attacks; a Rubik's cube, half-solved and then forgotten, and a slim book.

He takes the book out of the drawer, turns it over, recognising it. It's a copy of _Slaughterhouse Five._ The red and yellow dust jacket and leaves are real precious paper and the publisher's seal says the volume was published in 1972. John had sourced it himself, from a small antique book dealer in San Francisco. It had been a rather pointed Christmas gift to Dad and he remembers noting now, how it hadn't been on Dad's book shelf the last time he was in his office.

It looks well-thumbed. There are greasy finger marks along its spine and its pages are dog-eared, like it's been read and read again. He doesn't remember it ever being a favourite of Scott's

He's about to open his mouth to ask Skip if he knows anything about it when Skip puts a finger to his lips. Outside there comes the murmur of soft voices and the _bleepclick_ of the latch unhooking.

John puts the book back and slides the drawer closed. Skip quickly crosses the room and switches off the light. He motions for them to step into the bathroom. There are footsteps in the outer room, the jangle of keys and then nothing.

Through the crack in the bathroom door John peers out into the bedroom. The light in the outer room comes on, throwing a slim rectangle of white light against the bedroom wall.

He glances at his watch. It's 9:45. There's no reason for anyone else to be here.

"Are they looking for us?"

Skip gives the slightest shake of his head.

 _If I'm caught,_ he thinks, _I'll just step out. No one needs to know Skip was here._ His pulse is hammering in his ears.

A rhomboid of white light slides across the floor as the door swings open. Whoever is outside, they are coming in.

"This is it. Be quick, okay?" says a woman's voice in a whisper. "I'm deep in the shit if they find you here."

"Okay."

John's still trying to figure out what's going on when Skip surges forward. "Goddamn it to hell, Stubbs, what exactly do you think you're doing?"

The electric light comes on and the light box vanishes from the floor. He hears the woman falter at the sudden appearance of Skip. "Captain!"

"Airman, what the hell do you think you're doing? Sneaking civilians onto the base? Breaking and entering. Do you know how many charges you're risking?"

"Please, it wasn't her fault. I asked her," says a voice, a familiar voice, a _very_ familiar voice.

 _"Virgil?"_

"John?"

He steps out of the shadow of the bathroom and sees Virgil standing in the doorway. His younger brother practically looms over the young Airwoman with dark hair standing in front of him. Skip looms over them both, but flinches when John sticks his head around the door.

"What are you doing here?" Virgil gapes at him.

"What am _I_ doing here? What are _you_ doing here?"

"I…uh…"

"Well, isn't this a clusterfuck?" says Skip, placing his hands on his hips. "Stubbs, I oughta write you up."

The airwoman fidgets. She's tiny, with black hair looped in a tight braid and anxious sloe black eyes. "I know. I'm sorry, Cap. Really I am. But they've been talking shit about… There's been inappropriate talk regarding Lieutenant Tracy in the mess, Captain and why he hasn't reported to duty. And he," She taps Virgil on the shoulder "Was so determined to find him. I wanted to help him, you know?" She gives John the side eye and the flash of a smile. "I guess you _do_ know. Which one do you got?"

"The astronaut. Who's that?" Skip glares at Virgil. "The Olympian?"

"The artist. Except he says he's a pilot now."

 _He says he's a what?_

But Skip just rolls his eyes. "Go figure."

"We have names, you know," says Virgil, peevishly. "We're not a collectable set of breakfast cereal toys."

"Of course not, kid," says Skip, placating but patronising. "What's your youngest brother again? The congressman?"

" _He's in middle school!"_ both John and Virgil snap, simultaneously.

John scowls and Virgil digs his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

"What are you doing here, Virgil?" John asks.

"Same as you. Looking for Scott."

"You're supposed to be at school."

"Yeah, well. You've got better places to be too, right?" Virgil raises his chin so he's looking at John and not the floor. There's a stubborn jut to it, at once familiar and out of place on Virgil. Something seems different about him and for a moment John can't place just what it is. Then he realises. Virgil's always run to stocky, ungenerously even to chubby. At thirteen it had made him self-conscious enough to start to camouflage his weight with layers of shirts and t-shirts. Somewhere in the last week he's shed those extraneous layers. In just a pair of faded jeans and a v-neck grey t-shirt it's immediately clear what should have been obvious last week. The puppy fat is gone. Virgil's tanned and fit and for the first time in his life, probably in better shape than John.

He's still got that stupid moustache though.

"Hey, Stubbs," Skip says, a little louder than is necessary. "Come out here for a sec, I've got something real important to show you in the kitchen."

"Yes, Captain." Stubbs winks at Virgil and they both step out of the room, pull the door shut.

John eases himself away from the bathroom door and Virgil pushes off from the wall. They shuffle a little closer to each other.

"I didn't think you knew he was missing." John says. "Did Dad tell you?"

"Sort of." Virgil's fingers brush the tucked in corner of the bed. "I was with him when he got the news."

"He came to see you in Chicago?"

"Something like that," Virgil murmurs. "I'm surprised he told you."

"There's a lot of air force personnel with the space agency. I suppose he was afraid the news would get to me anyway."

"And did it?"

"No. Why would it?"

"I dunno. It seems like Stubbs was saying there's a lot of talk about him."

"Maybe I just don't pay attention to that sort of stuff."

Virgil looks around. "Does he really live here?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Did you find anything?"

"No."

Virgil jostles past him, as if he doesn't trust John to look, or as if maybe Scott's hiding in the bathroom too. He looks inside, brushes the shower curtain back, and then pulls the wardrobe door open. His fingers grope right to the back of the empty safe.

John lets him at it, goes to retrieve his hard-drive where a one-two-three blink tells him it has finished its work. He pockets it and picks up the digital photo-frame. It cycles to the family portrait, the five of them smiling blandly on the balcony of the New York penthouse. Teeth immaculately white, hair immaculately brushed, each of arranged so that John's red hair won't clash with Alan's blonde and Scott's height wouldn't look comical among his smaller brothers. Dad's wearing a black bomber jacket, like he's just leapt off the gantry of Artemis 5. Heroic astronaut and family man. They look perfect.

The reality was that they had been miserable. None of them had wanted to give the first day of school holidays over to the dreary photoshoot. Virgil had crashed through arpeggios on the baby grand piano between set ups and Alan, who had been only seven, had thrown a DEFCON One tantrum because he was jet-lagged and out of sync with the time zone and it was way past his bedtime. Every time John found a quiet place to read he was disturbed by a stylist trying to stick yet more safety pins into his hated grey and green sweater vest.

Scott had turned up at quarter to six, fresh from his first year at college and with Miss Rhode Island in tow. He'd showered, thrown on the white shirt and slate grey trousers selected for him, thoroughly charmed the stylists and posed for the photos without ever alerting anyone from the press that he and Dad weren't even speaking to each other.

That had been the same article in which Dad had said, " _the future of space exploration is the property of the capitalist,_ " John remembers, with a wince.

He wonders what it is about that photo that makes Scott want to keep it around, want to display it here where people can see it. Why does he want this reminder of their wax figure selves, so artificial that if you tapped them hard enough they might shatter? John can never believe just how dreamy and dim he himself looks in those photos, or how Gordon looks butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth angelic.

And the louche Scott in the picture looks nothing like the immaculate model soldier who fades up as the balcony photo fades out. The buttons on his uniform and the medal pinned to his chest sparkle. He gleams.

Virgil is peering over his shoulder now, his brows knotted together. "Hey, Scott," he says to the photograph and then to John, "There's nothing here."

"No."

"I thought there'd be something." He sounds disappointed.

"What are you doing here, Virgil? Were you expecting to find him hiding out in the bathtub?" It comes out more harshly than he means.

But Virgil just seems amused. "You're going to give _me_ grief about being here? What are _you_ doing here? Guilty conscience?"

"Of course not. Why would I have a guilty conscience?"

Virgil gives him a look. "Gee, I don't know, Johnny. Maybe something to do with the shouting match you had just outside my door last week."

"You heard that?"

"Grandpa Grant heard that." Virgil pulls one of Scott's hoodies on over his head and puts his hands into the pockets. "And I'm here because I thought this would be as good a place as any to start. Figure out where he's been, so I know where he's going. Talk to his friends. I'm going to find Scott," he says, almost as an afterthought. "Drag him home kicking and screaming if I have to. You can help. Since you're here."

"Gosh. Thanks." But suddenly he does feel guilty. Not about Scott, but for Virgil. Poor Virgil. Of course, he wants to help. Of course, he wants to be seen to be doing something useful for once. It seems petty to point out if Kyrano can't find Scott, if not a single digital rock John's turned over has offered up one lead there's precious little Virgil's going to be able to do.

"It's not like he just disappeared. People don't just van– " Virgil breaks off, colours suddenly. "I didn't mean. Sorry, John."

"What? Oh. That."

When he was nine years old John had been kidnapped. He had been walking home from school one day when Scott had stayed late for basketball practice. An arm had gone around his waist and another over his nose and he had been picked up and tossed into the back of a van. One of his kidnappers had brandished a knife at him, told him that good little boys were well treated but bad little boys had their fingers and toes cut off one by one.

After that they had been civil to him, fed him cold spaghetti hoops and given him a gamegle to play with.

He wishes he could say he had been brave or plucky or clever, that he had outwitted his captors and escaped on his own, but the reality is that he had spent a long weekend playing _Tetris Masters_ in a duplex in downtown Portland. At the end of the third day there had been terrifying sounds outside and he had buried his head beneath his blanket. But when the door creaked open it had been Kyrano who had been outside, ready to scoop him up and take him home.

When he looks back on it now it seems like something that happened to someone else. The worst part had been when, firmly held in Dad's arms, he had had to wade through the sea of flashing cameras and shouting reporters from the steps of the hospital to the car.

In the aftermath, Dad had insisted on subcutaneous GPS transmitters for each of them. Before leaving Algiers, Scott had cut his out and flushed it. John's seen the records. It had transmitted for three days from the bottom of a reservoir outside the city before blinking out.

John feels a sudden creep along his spine. Had it been flushed? Had Dad sent divers to retrieve it? Had they checked the rest of Scott wasn't down there with it? And why hadn't that occurred to John before now? He'd just assumed that Scott had taken himself off to sulk, to lick his wounds in private, to throw his disapproval in Dad's face by torpedoing his career. Before now he'd never considered other possibilities. He had thought Scott understandable, quantifiable, a problem he had already solved.

But who is this Scott who can make himself vanish without leaving a digital trace? And who is this person living a carefully studied half-life?

John's legs give out from under him and he sits down on the bed.

"John." Virgil's hand grips his shoulder. "Sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up."

"I'm fine."

 _A good first test._

But Dad hadn't meant that finding Scott was his first test. He had meant:

When you're 200,000 miles above the Earth's surface, dropping everything and coming home is not going to be an option available to you.

He had meant: You're going to have to learn what it costs to be able to do nothing when people you care about are in trouble.

He had meant: I need someone cool, collected, dispassionate. Someone who can be rational even when people you care about are in danger; _especially_ when people you care about are in danger.

So, John's already failed this test, because he's here, chasing his tail in the desert, imagining worst case scenarios and achieving nothing as the possibility of finding Scott gets more and more remote.

 _Fuck you, Scott._

Because even in his absence Scott's deconstructing him, making him doubt himself, pointing out he's not the man he thought he was.

"Come on, John." Virgil takes him by the arm. "We should go. He's not here, okay?"

"Yeah, okay."

He's quiet as Virgil says goodbye to Stubbs and as Skip drives them back off the base. He feels strange, disassociated.

They pull in in the parking lot of a 7eleven. Beneath a no loitering sign a beat-up jalopy stands parked. "This is me," says Virgil.

The car looks like it runs on rust and prayer. Skip raises an eyebrow as he pulls in. "Is this what the Tracy boys are driving nowadays?"

Virgil scratches his head, embarrassed. "It belongs to Dave, my neighbour. He loaned it to me in exchange for a painting and my bike. I don't think he ever thought I could get it to run."

"Can't imagine why."

"Wait a second." John is pulled back to himself. "Your _neighbour?_ _ **In Chicago?!**_ _Y_ ou didn't drive clean across the country in _that_?"

Virgil nods, shrugs. "Had to. Dad grounded me."

"Virgil, you're nearly nineteen. He can't ground you."

Virgil shrugs. "Froze my assets then. Revoked my clearance to my bank accounts, even the ones he wasn't supposed to know about." John doesn't miss the way Skip's eyebrows go up. "Gave me sixty dollars a day to live on and five days to clear out my apartment and hand my notice in at my job."

" _Why?"_

Virgil shrugs, sanguine. "Maybe he was afraid I'd take off to New Mexico to look for Scott." He opens the door of Skip's car to let himself out. "Thank you very much, Captain Guerra."

"Nice to meet you, Virgil. And nice moustache."

"Thanks!"

John jumps out of the car after him. "You're not going to drive back in that death trap?"

"Sure. Wanna ride? Where you going?"

"I've got a 7am flight," he says stiffly. To LAX with no connecting flight. It had seemed a good international hub to start from. He had figured by then he would know where he was going. "I'm booked into an airport hotel in Albuquerque."

"That's on my way. I can take you." He reads John's expression. "Or I can drop you back to town and you can get the mag."

"Come back with me." John rolls his eyes. "I'll pay for your flight."

"I don't need your money, John."

"No, you need a miracle to keep that thing running."

"Anyway, I promised Dave I'd have the car back."

Dave, John decides at once, is a frustrated serial killer.

"Virgil, I… I'm pulling rank. I can't let you drive that thing across the country."

This is the part where Virgil folds. It's where he always folds. If it were Gordon or Alan it might be different, but Virgil can be relied upon to be sensible and obedient. Except _this Virgil_ is grinning a most un-Virgil like grin, and folding his arms on the roof of the car. "Then I guess you have until Albuquerque to convince me not to."

There was a time, when gasoline was cheaper and more readily available, when freeways were the arteries of America, but that was before economies of scale in fusion tech made public transport the faster, cheaper option. Nowadays, automobiles are mainly used for short distances and driving is a dying art. The freeways are half-empty and poorly maintained, populated mainly by the huge 26 and 48-wheeler transport wagons, itinerant nu-gypsies and the occasional motoring hobbyist.

They speed along in silence that stops just short of companionable. The night is squid ink black and full of stars. The head beams of the transport wagons dazzle him as they harrumph out of the darkness and rattle past. There's music playing softly over the speakers. It's neither unpleasant nor identifiable. Virgil's always been an early adopter when it comes to new music.

The jalopy doesn't even have an autodrive function so Virgil has to _steer,_ but they're making good time. John can't shake the sensation that he should be saying something, but he's just not sure what. Every time he tries it gets turned into a clearing of his throat or a groan.

But a sign tells him that Albuquerque is only a hundred miles away so he clears his throat once more and asks, "Did you know about any of this? Did he confide in you?"

Virgil keeps his eyes on the road as he says, "Johnny, Scott doesn't really talk to me at all, except to say, 'Uh, how's the art thing going, Virg?' like I'm seven."

"Oh… uh, how is the art thing going?"

"I quit." Virgil's expression doesn't change. "I'm going to Stanford in the fall, on Dad's dime. Engineering."

"Oh."

He wants to ask more but something in Virgil's manner strongly discourages it and a minute later he pulls into one of the roadside gas stations and stops. "I'm starving. Can I getcha anything?"

John shrugs. "Sure. Whatever you're having."

"I'll get two of everything then."

A second later John remembers the danger. "No granola bars, Virgil." He calls at his brother's retreating back. "And I don't want a kale smoothie." John's got an astronaut's general outlook on health but a computer programmer's compulsive need for E numbers.

"Sure thing, John. Just caffeine, cocaine and gin." He waves a hand and keeps walking.

He gets out of the car to stretch his legs and goes for a short prowl around the tiny outdoor seating area. Just as he's stretching out his quads his phone rings.

 _"Hey there, polar bear."_

Rest, and a day of forced routine attending lectures, have obviously done Gordon some good. He's evened out a little, lost that manic gleam. Last night – or rather in the early hours of this morning – it had been all John had been able to do to get some sleep. He had spent most of the evening stuck between gears, trapped between being furious at this Lady Penelope and being utterly besotted. One minute John had been talking him down from turning her and himself in to the Admiralty, and the next he seemed about ready to start carving "GCT hearts PCW" into bulkhead walls. He had paced back and forth, bouncing up onto his hammock and back down again, peeling off one item of clothing at a time until he was down to his t-shirt and boxer-briefs, repeating things that had been said to him or about him, collapsing with a sigh in his chair and then leaping up to say, "And another thing!"

This evening at least he seems calmer, though the first words out of his mouth are still, "I've been thinking about that Lady Penelope chick."

"Oh? Really?"

"Yeah, really," says Gordon, who is maybe not as oblivious to sarcasm on the subject as John had thought. He's tipped back precariously on his chair, slurping kelp noodles with a pair of ceramic chop sticks. "Do you think you could track her down?"

In fact, there's already a burgeoning file about the Lady Penelope Creighton Ward in John's personal vault, locked behind every digital protection John can come up with, but he's not going to tell Gordon that. "I'm not sure."

"Oh, come on, Johnnycakes. You can find anybody."

John winces. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to cancel tonight's session. Something's come up."

"No prob. Everything okay? John?" Gordon's looking hard at him now and the edges of his smile are starting to droop. He looks unsettled.

"Everything's fine," John says and to change the subject he says, "What would you say if I told you Virgil wanted to go to Stanford to study engineering."

Gordon nods. "Makes sense. Good school."

"It is a good school. Don't you think it might be too good a school? Virgil's always been more focused on the arts then academics."

"That's… true."

"Some of the people I work with studied engineering at Stanford. They said that was excellent but intense. Might it not be too much for Virgil? He barely scraped through high school math."

Suddenly Gordon cracks a broad smile. "Oh no. Are we about to have the birds and the bees talk? We are! Oh, no. Johnny!" He throws back his head and laughs.

"Gor… Cooper!"

"Sorry. Sorry. So. When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much and the mommy and the daddy both have IQs pushing 160…"

"Cooper, be serious."

Gordon slurps a kelp noodle back into his skull. "What I mean is… John, you know Virgil's good at math, right?"

"Of course, he's fine, sure. But there are standards–"

"John, you know that Virgil is smart, right?"

"Of course, but multiple intelligences are -"

"No. Not multiple intelligences. Not everyone is special in their own special way. Not 'everyone get out your crayons and form a circlejerk because we are all about to be blowtorched by the fiery intellect of John Glenn Tracy…' I'm losing the run of this metaphor. To rephrase: You know Virgil is smart, like _smart_ smart. Like, _you_ smart."

There is a moment's silence, then Gordon groans. "Oh man, you didn't. Oh, no. I was counting on you to tell Scott. Does this mean I'm going to have to tell Scott? I'm not telling Scott. Why do you think his 'math tutor' was an emeritus professor of mathematics instead of the usual broke post-grad?"

"I thought… I thought that was just Dad being Dad."

"Well, yeah, sure, a little bit. Also, no! C'mon, Dude, he got 1007 on his SAT scores the year the mean score was 1006. He nearly failed basic trig yet somehow managed to get by in all those AP calc courses. John, he actually read your dissertation."

For just a moment John goggles. "Oh, shit."

Gordon's noodles nearly come back down his nose. "Johnny, you said a bad word!"

"I've got to go. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Don't forget to keep up with your reading."

"Yes, teach. Say hi to Virgil for me. I mean, not actually. Can you imagine if he thought we were really friends?"

By the time Virgil returns with supplies John's already got their route to Chicago planned out along with appropriate gas stations for re-supplies. "It's a 26.2-hour drive to Chicago traveling at 60 miles per hour. We'll each take two six hour shifts, with fifteen minute breaks every two hours. Why don't you take first shift, while I work out our rest stops."

"Okay, Johnny."

Virgil takes the first six hours and John the second. By the time he finishes his shift he's been awake for 39 hours, so while Virgil drives, he dozes in the back seat.

When he wakes up, they're already in Kansas.


End file.
